IRLF 


IflD 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


LIBRARY 

OF  THK 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


BUILDERS  OF  THE  NATION 

OR 
From  the  Indian  Trail  to  the  Railroad 


National  Edition 
Complete  in  Twelve  Volumes 


pfy 


jfr     *f 


ILLUSTr. 
.-...* — «*„..«. 


(I  UNIVERSiTY  3 
V,  of  / 


Nation  Bag  at  fyt  Asimcg— -Watting  for  ttje 

From  an  original  painting  by  F>ank   '!'.  Johnson. 


NATIONAL  EDITION 

COMPLETE  IN  TWELVE  VOLUMES 

f   -*^^^z    •   •—•<    •      -~r^^  ~   ^ 

guifdecs^Nation 


THE  INDIAN 


By 

George  Bird  Grinnell 

Author  of  Pawnee  Hero  Stories  and 
Folk  Tales 


ILLUSTRATED 

"•*-  "=* 

NE\NT  YORK 

TIlEBg^MPTONSOCIETY 

PUBLISHERS 


OFTHE 

UNIVERSITY 

rtf 


Copyright,  1895, 
By  D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1908 
By  THE  BRAMPTON  SOCIETY 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

VIII.— PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS 125 

IX.— IMPLEMENTS  AND  INDUSTRIES        .       .        .        .143 

X.— MAN  AND   NATURE 163 

XI.— HIS   CREATION 182 

XII.— THE  WORLD  OF  THE  DEAD    .....    195 
XIII. — PAWNEE  RELIGION 202 

XIV. — THE   OLD   FAITH   AND  THE   NEW       ....      214 

XV. — THE  COMING  OF  THE  WHITE  MAN  224 


APPENDIX. — THE    NORTH    AMERICANS — YESTER 
DAY  AND  TO-DAY 241 

INDEX  ,    2G9 


Indian.  II. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


RATION   DAY   AT   THE    AGENCY — WAITING    FOR   THE 

BEEF FRONTISPIECE 

From  an  Original  Painting  by  Frank  T.  Johnson 

PAGE 

CROOKED  HAND,  A  PAWNEE  BRAVE 125 

PIEGAN  TRAVOIS 156 

QUATSENA  VILLAGE,  WEST  COAST  VANCOUVER  ISLAND,  162 

CREE  LODGE  AND  RED  RIVER  CART         ....  176 

PAWNEE  DIRT  LODGE 192 

GROUP  OF  SAPALELLE  LA  TETES,  WEST  COAST  VANCOU 
VER  ISLAND 214 

GROUP  OF  ASSINIBOINES  260 


Indian.  II. 


Crooked  Hand,  a  Pawnee  Brave. 


THE   STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

PRAIRIE   BATTLEFIELDS. 

IK  the  historic  period,  the  Indian  has  always  been 
a  warrior.  Urged  on  by  the  hope  of  plunder,  the 
longing  for  reputation,  or  the  desire  for  revenge,  he 
has  raided  the  white  settlements  and  made  hostile  in 
cursions  against  those  of  his  own  race ;  and  each  war 
party  that  set  out  endeavoured  to  injure  as  much  as 
possible  the  enemy  it  attacked.  As  each  woman 
might  fight  or  be  a  mother  of  warriors,  and  as  each 
child  might  grow  to  be  a  warrior  or  a  woman,  women 
and  children  were  slain  in  war  as  gladly  as  men,  for 
the  killing  of  each  individual  was  a  blow  to  the  ene 
my.  It  helped  to  weaken  his  power  and  to  strike  ter 
ror  to  his  heart. 

But  the  Indian  has  not  always  been  a  warrior. 
Long  ago,  there  was  a  time  when  war  was  unknown 
and  when  all  people  lived  on  good  terms  with  their 
neighbours,  making  friendly  visits,  and  being  hos 
pitably  received,  and  when  they  in  turn  were  visited, 
returning  this  hospitality.  The  Blackfeet  say  that 
"  in  the  earliest  times  there  was  no  war,"  and  give  a 
circumstantial  account  of  the  first  time  that  a  man 
was  killed  in  war;  the  Arickaras  have  stories  of  a 
time  when  war  was  unknown,  and  tell  about  the  first 
fighting  that  took  place ;  and  in  like  manner  many 
of  the  tribes,  which,  in  our  time  have  proved  bravest 

125 


126  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

and  most  ferocious  in  war,  tell  of  those  primitive  days 
before  conflict  was  known. 

I  have  elsewhere  *  given  my  reasons  for  believing 
that  previous  to  the  coming  of  the  whites  there  were 
no  general  or  long-continued  wars  among  the  Indians, 
because  there  was  then  no  motive  for  war.  No  doubt 
from  time  to  time  quarrels  arose  between  different 
tribes  or  different  bands  of  the  same  tribe,  and  in 
such  disputes  blood  was  occasionally  shed,  but  I  do 
not  believe  that  there  was  anything  like  the  systematic 
warfare  that  has  existed  in  recent  years.  The  quar 
rels  that  took  place  were  usually  trivial  and  about 
trivial  subjects— about  women,  about  the  division  of 
a  buffalo,  etc.  Real  wars  could  have  arisen  only  by 
the  irruption  of  one  tribe  into  the  territory  of  an 
other,  and  the  land  was  so  broad  and  its  inhabitants 
so  few  that  this  could  have  occurred  but  seldom. 

It  is  difficult  for  us,  with  our  knowledge  of  im 
proved  implements  of  war,  to  comprehend  how  blood 
less  these  early  wars  of  the  Indians  must  have  been. 
A  shield  would  stop  a  stone-headed  arrow,  and  at  a 
slightly  greater  distance  a  robe  would  do  the  same. 
Their  stone-headed  lances  were  adapted  to  tearing 
and  bruising  rather  than  to  piercing  the  flesh,  and 
their  most  effective  weapon  was  no  doubt  the  stone 
warclub,  or  battleaxe,  which  was  heavy  enough,  if 
the  blow  was  fairly  delivered,  to  crush  in  a  man's 
skull.  In  those  old  days,  we  may  imagine  that  in 
many,  if  not  in  most,  of  the  battles  that  took  place, 
the  combatants,  however  anxious  they  may  have  been 
to  kill,  were  forced  to  content  themselves  with  beating 
and  poking  each  other,  giving  and  receiving  nothing 

*  Blackfoot  Lodge  Tales,  p.  243. 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS.  127 

more  serious  than  a  few  bruises.  Those  who  have 
witnessed  fights  in  modern  times  between  consider 
able  bodies  of  Indians  armed  with  iron-pointed  arrows, 
knives,  and  hatchets,  will  remember  how  very  trifling 
has  been  the  loss  of  life  in  proportion  to  the  numbers 
of  the  men  engaged.  Such  battles,  as  I  have  elsewhere 
shown,  might  go  on  for  half  a  day  without  loss  of  life 
on  either  side,  but  when  one  party  acknowledged  de 
feat  and  turned  to  run,  the  slaughter  in  the  pursuit 
might  be  considerable. 

In  these  wars  between  different  tribes,  the  greatest 
losses  usually  occurred  when  one  party  was  surprised 
by  another,  the  attacking  party  killing  a  number  of 
men  at  the  first  onslaught,  and  perhaps  in  the  ensuing 
panic.  If,  however,  those  attacked  rallied  and  turned 
to  fight,  the  assailants,  unless  they  greatly  outnum 
bered  their  enemy,  often  drew  off  at  once,  satisfied 
with  what  they  had  accomplished  in  the  surprise. 

The  story  of  the  last  great  fight  which  took  place 
between  the  three  allied  tribes  of  Pawnees  and  the 
Skidi  tribe,  just  previous  to  the  latter's  incorporation 
into  the  Pawnee  nation,  is  an  example  of  this,  and  has 
never  been  told  in  detail.  It  gives  a  good  idea  of  one 
view  of  Indian  warfare,  shows  that  they  had  some  no 
tions  of  strategy,  and  also  brings  out  in  strong  relief 
the  common  sense  and  benevolence  of  the  Kit'ka-hah- 
ki  chief.  The  story  was  told  me  many  years  ago  by 
an  old  Chaui',  substantially  as  given  below.  He  said  : 

It  was  long  ago.  At  that  time  my  father  was  a 
young  man.  I  had  not  been  born.  Many  years  before, 
the  three  tribes  of  Pawnees  had  come  up  from  the 
south,  and  had  found  the  Skidi  living  in  this  country. 
Their  villages  were  scattered  along  the  Broad  River 
(the  Platte)  and  the  Many  Potatoes  River  (Loup). 


128  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

There  were  many  of  them,  a  great  tribe.  But  there 
were  many  more  of  the  Pawnees  than  there  were  of 
the  Skidi. 

When  our  people  first  met  the  Skidi,  we  were 
friendly ;  we  found  that  we  spoke  a  language  almost 
the  same,  and  so  we  learned  that  we  were  relations — 
the  same  people — so  we  smoked  together  and  used  to 
visit  each  other's  villages,  and  to  eat  together.  We 
were  friends.  But  after  a  while,  some  of  the  Skidi 
and  some  of  the  Chaui'  got  to  quarrelling.  I  do  not 
know  what  it  was  about.  After  that  there  were  more 
quarrels,  and  at  last  a  Skidi  was  killed  ;  and  after  that 
the  people  were  afraid  to  go  near  the  Skidi  village, 
and  the  Skidi  did  not  come  near  the  Chaui'  village  for 
fear  they  might  be  killed. 

One  time  in  the  winter,  a  party  of  men  from  the 
Chaui'  village,  which  then  stood  on  the  south  side  of 
the  Broad  Kiver,  just  below  the  place  of  the  Lone 
Tree  (now  Central  City,  Neb.),  crossed  the  river  to 
hunt  buffalo  between  the  Platte  and  the  Loup.  While 
they  were  killing  buffalo,  a  war  party  of  the  Skidi  at 
tacked  them  and  fought  them,  and  killed  almost  all 
of  them.  Some  of  the  Chaui'  got  away  and  went  back 
to  their  village  and  told  what  had  happened,  and  how 
the  Skidi  had  attacked  them. 

Now  at  this  time  the  Chaui'  and  the  Skidi  tribes 
were  about  equal  in  numbers,  and  the  Chaui'  did  not 
feel  strong  enough  to  attack  the  Skidi  alone.  They 
were  afraid,  for  they  knew  that  if  they  did  this,  it 
might  be  that  the  Skidi  would  defeat  them.  The 
Kit'ka-hah-ki  tribe  were  living  on  the  Much  Manure 
River  (Republican),  and  the  Pita-hau-i'rat  on  the  Yel 
low  Bank  River  (Smoky  Hill).  To  these  two  tribes 
of  their  people  the  Chaui'  sent  the  pipe,  telling  them 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS.  129 

what  had  happened,  and  asking  them  for  help  against 
the  Skidi.  Each  of  the  tribes  held  a  council  about 
the  matter.  All  the  best  warriors  and  the  wise  old 
men  talked  about  it,  and  each  one  gave  his  opinion  as 
to  what  should  be  done  ;  and  they  decided  to  help  the 
Chaui'.  The  two  villages  moved  north  and  camped 
close  to  the  Chaui'  village,  and  all  the  warriors  of  all 
three  tribes  began  to  get  ready  for  the  attack.  By 
this  time  it  was  early  summer,  and  the  Platte  Kiver, 
swollen  "by  the  melting  of  the  snows  in  the  mountains, 
was  bank  full — too  deep  and  swift  to  be  crossed  either 
by  wading  or  swimming.  So  the  women  made  many 
"  bull  boats  "  of  fresh  buffalo  hides  and  willow  branch 
es,  and  in  these  the  Pawnee  warriors  crossed  the  stream. 
The  main  village  of  the  Skidi  was  on  the  north  side 
of  the  Loup  River,  only  about  twenty  miles  from  that 
of  the  Chaui'.  The  crossing  of  the  Pawnees  was  ac 
complished  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  a  night  march 
was  made  to  a  point  on  the  south  side  of  the  Loup, 
several  miles  below  the  Skidi  village. 

Here  they  halted  and  distributed  their  forces.  One 
hundred  men,  all  mounted  on  dark-coloured  horses, 
were  sent  further  down  the  stream,  and  were  told  what 
to  do  when  morning  came.  The  remaining  warriors 
hid  themselves,  half  in  the  thick  timber  which  grew 
in  the  wide  bottom  close  along  the  river,  and  half  in 
the  ravines  and  among  the  ridges  of  the  sandhills 
above  this  bottom.  Between  the  sandhills  and  the 
timber  was  a  wide,  level,  open  space.  The  Pawnees 
were  so  many  that  their  lines  reached  far  up  and  down 
the  stream. 

When  daylight  came,  the  one  hundred  men  who 
had  been  sent  down  the  stream  came  filing  down  from 
the  prairie  one  after  another.  Each  man  was  bent 


130  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

down  on  his  horse's  neck  and  covered  with  his  buffalo 
robe,  so  that  at  a  distance  these  one  hundred  riders 
looked  like  one  hundred  buffalo,  coming  down  to  the 
water  to  drink.  The  spot  chosen  for  them  to  pass 
could  be  seen  from  the  village  of  the  Skidi.  In  that 
village,  a  long  way  off,  some  one  who  was  watching 
saw  these  animals,  and  called  out  to  the  others  that 
buffalo  were  in  sight.  It  was  at  once  decided  to  go 
out  and  kill  the  game,  and  a  large  force  of  Skidi  set 
out  to  do  this.  They  crossed  the  river  opposite  the 
village,  and  galloped  down  the  bottom  on  the  south 
side.  In  doing  this,  they  had  to  pass  between  the 
Pawnees  who  were  hidden  in  the  timber  and  those  in 
the  sandhills.  They  rode  swiftly  down  the  river,  no 
one  of  them  all  suspecting  that  anything  was  wrong ; 
but  after  they  had  passed  well  within  the  Pawnee  lines, 
these  burst  upon  them  from  all  sides  and  charged 
them.  Attacked  in  front,  on  either  side,  and  in  the 
rear — taken  wholly  by  surprise,  and  seeing  they  were 
outnumbered — the  Skidi  tried  to  retreat,  and  scat 
tering,  broke  through  the  lines  wherever  they  could 
and  ran,  but  all  the  way  up  that  valley  the  victorious 
Pawnees  slaughtered  them  as  they  fled.  They  took  a 
good  revenge,  and  killed  more  than  twice  as  many  of 
the  Skidi  as  those  had  of  the  Chaui'. 

At  last  the  Skidi  who  were  left  alive  had  crossed 
the  river  and  reached  their  village,  and  had  told  their 
people  what  had  happened,  and  how  they  had  been 
attacked  and  defeated,  and  had  lost  many  of  their 
men.  All  the  warriors  who  were  left  in  the  village 
armed  themselves,  and  came  to  the  river  bank  to  meet 
the  Pawnees  when  they  should  cross,  determined  to 
die  there  fighting  for  their  homes. 

When  the  Pawnees  reached  the  crossing,  a  part  of 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS. 

them  wanted  to  ford  the  river  at  once  and  attack  the 
Skidi  village  and  kill  all  the  people  in  it,  so  that  none 
of  the  Skidi  should  be  left  alive.  The  chiefs  and  head 
men  of  the  Pita-hau-i'rat  and  the  Chaui'  wanted  to  do 
this,  but  the  Kit'ka-hah-ki  chief  said  :  "  No,  this  shall 
not  be  so.  They  have  fought  us  and  made  trouble, 
it  is  true,  but  now  we  have  punished  them  for  that. 
They  speak  our  language,  and  they  are  the  same  peo 
ple  with  us.  They  are  our  relations,  and  they  must 
not  be  destroyed."  But  the  other  two  tribes  were  very 
bitter,  and  said  that  the  Kit'ka-hah-ki  could  do  as 
they  liked,  but  that  they  were  going  to  attack  the 
Skidi  village,  burn  it,  and  kill  the  people.  For  a  long 
time  they  disputed  and  almost  quarrelled  as  to  what 
should  be  done.  At  length  the  Kit'ka-hah-ki  chief 
got  angry,  and  said  to  the  others  :  "  My  friends,  listen 
to  me.  You  keep  telling  me  what  you  are  going  to  do, 
and  that  you  intend  to  attack  this  village  and  destroy 
all  these  people,  and  you  say  that  the  Kit'ka-hah-ki 
can  do  what  they  please,  but  that  you  intend  to  do  as 
you  have  said.  Very  well,  you  will  do  what  seems 
good  to  you.  Now  I  will  tell  you  what  the  Kit'ka- 
hah-ki  will  do.  They  will  cross  this  river  to  the  Skidi 
village,  and  will  take  their  stand  by  the  side  of  the 
Skidi  and  defend  that  village,  and  you  can  then  try 
whether  you  are  strong  enough  and  brave  enough  to 
conquer  the  Kit'ka-hah-ki  and  the  Skidi,  fighting 
side  by  side  as  friends."  When  the  Chaui'  and  the 
Pita-hau-i'rat  heard  this,  they  did  not  know  what  to 
say.  They  knew  that  the  Skidi  and  the  Kit'ka-hah-ki 
were  both  brave,  and  that  together  these  two  tribes 
were  as  many  as  themselves.  So  they  did  not  know 
what  to  do.  They  were  doubtful. 

At  last  the  Kit'ka-hah-ki  chief  spoke  again,  and 
10 


132  THE  STORY  OP  THE  INDIAN. 

said  :  "  Brothers,  what  is  the  use  of  quarrelling  over 
this.  The  Skidi  have  made  trouble.  They  live  here 
by  themselves,  away  from  the  rest  of  us.  Now  let  us 
make  them  move  their  village  over  to  the  Platte  and 
live  close  to  us,  so  that  they  will  be  a  part  of  the  Paw 
nee  tribe."  To  this  proposition  all  the  Pawnees,  after 
some  talk,  agreed. 

They  made  signs  to  the  Skidi  on  the  other  bank 
that  they  did  not  wish  to  fight  any  more,  they  wanted 
to  talk  now,  and  then  they  crossed  over.  They  told 
the  Skidi  what  they  had  decided  to  do,  and  these, 
cowed  by  their  defeat  and  awed  by  the  large  force 
opposed  to  them,  agreed  to  what  had  been  decided. 

The  Pawnees  took  for  themselves  much  of  the 
property  of  the  Skidis — many  horses.  This  was  to 
punish  them  for  having  broken  the  treaty.  Also  they 
made  many  of  the  Skidi  women  marry  into  the  other 
Pawnee  tribes,  so  as  to  establish  closer  relations  with 
them.  Since  that  time  the  Skidi  have  always  been  a 
part  of  the  Pawnee  nation. 

Cunning  is  matched  with  cunning  in  the  following 
story,  told  me  by  the  Cheyennes : 

About  the  year  1852  the  Pawnees  and  the  Chey 
ennes  had  a  fight  at  a  point  on  the  Republican  River, 
where  there  was  a  big  horseshoe  bend  in  which  much 
timber  grew.  A  war  party  of  each  tribe  was  passing 
through  the  country,  and  the  scouts  of  each  discovered 
the  other  at  about  the  same  time,  but  neither  party 
knew  that  its  presence  had  been  detected.  The  Chey 
ennes,  however,  suspecting  that  perhaps  they  had  been 
seen,  displayed  great  shrewdness.  They  went  into  the 
timber,  built  a  large  fire,  ate  some  food,  and  then  cut 
a  lot  of  logs,  which  they  placed  by  the  fire  and  about 
which  they  wrapped  their  blankets  and  robes,  so  that 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS.  j.33 

they  looked  like  human  figures  lying  down  asleep. 
Then  the  Cheyennes  retired  into  the  shadow  of  a  cut 
bank  and  waited.  Toward  the  middle  of  the  night, 
after  the  fire  had  burned  down,  the  Pawnees  were 
seen  coming,  creeping  stealthily  through  the  brush, 
and  when  they  had  come  close  to  the  fire,  they  made 
an  attack,  shooting  at  the  supposed  sleepers,  and  then 
charging  upon  them.  As  soon  as  they  were  in  the 
camp  and  were  attacking  the  dummies,  the  Cheyennes 
began  to  shoot,  and  then  in  their  turn  charged,  and  in 
the  fight  which  followed  eighteen  or  nineteen  Paw 
nees  were  killed. 

The  old  Cheyenne  who  told  me  this,  chuckled  de 
lightedly,  as  he  remarked,  "  The  Cheyennes  often 
laugh  at  this  now." 

The  Indians  set  a  high  value  on  life,  and  do  not 
willingly  risk  it.  Warriors  and  chiefs  always  tried  to 
keep  those  under  their  command  from  exposing  them 
selves,  for  it  was  a  disgrace  for  the  leader  of  a  war 
party  to  lose  any  of  his  men.  It  wras  their  policy  to 
inflict  the  greatest  possible  injury  on  the  enemy  with 
the  least  possible  risk  to  themselves.  They  aimed  to 
strike  a  telling  blow,  and  before  the  enemy  had  recov 
ered  from  the  surprise  to  put  themselves  out  of  the 
way  of  danger.  Their  war  was  one  of  ambuscades 
and  surprises,  and  having  been  educated  to  this  method 
of  fighting,  they  were  not  at  all  fitted  to  carry  on  bat 
tles  in  which  there  was  steady  and  open  fighting.  In 
light  cavalry  tactics  or  guerilla  warfare  they  excelled, 
but  in  the  early  days  they  could  not  face  the  steady 
fire  of  men  at  bay.  Under  such  conditions  they  be 
came  unsteady  and  soon  broke.  The  fact  that  they 
have  been  brought  up  to  fight  on  a  different  principle 
from  the  white  man  has  gained  for  Indians  the  repu- 


134  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAtf. 

tation  of  being  cowards,  but  in  later  years  the  warfare 
of  more  than  one  tribe  of  plains  Indians  has  demon 
strated  that  when  they  have  learned  the  white  man's 
way  of  fighting,  they  are  as  brave  as  he. 

Notwithstanding  all  that  has  been  said,  desperate 
battles  were  now  and  then  waged  between  Indian 
tribes,  fights  which,  for  ferocity  and  bravery,  perhaps 
equal  anything  that  we  know  of  in  civilized  warfare. 
The  last  considerable  fight  which  took  place  between 
the  Piegan  tribe  and  the  allied  Crows  and  Gros  Ven- 
tres  of  the  Prairie  was  such  an  one.  The  story  of  this 
fight,  as  I  give  it  below,  is  compiled  from  the  narra 
tives  which  I  took  down  in  the  year  1891  from  the 
lips  of  three  men  who  were  engaged  in  the  battle,  and 
I  have  no  doubt  that  it  is  a  fairly  accurate  account  of 
the  events  of  the  day.  The  occurrence  is  interesting 
from  the  completeness  of  the  victory  and  the  great 
number  of  the  slain  on  the  defeated  side.  Aside  from 
this,  the  account,  as  here  given,  is  full  of  characteristic 
Indian  forms  of  thought,  and,  in  the  matter-of-fact 
way  in  which  its  bloody  details  are  related,  it  furnishes 
an  excellent  illustration  of  the  point  of  view  from 
which  Indians  look  at  war  and  its  events. 

It  was  toward  the  end  of  the  summer,  when  the 
cherries  were  ripe — twenty-four  years  ago  (1867) — that 
this  fight  took  place.  Wolf  Calf  was  already  old. 
Mad  Wolf  was  a  young  man  just  in  his  prime.  Eaven 
Lariat  was  a  full-fledged  warrior.  Wolf  Tail  was 
very  young ;  he  had  not  yet  taken  a  woman  to  sit  be 
side  him. 

All  the  Piegans  except  Three  Suns'  band — in  all 
perhaps  two  thousand  lodges — were  camped  about 
twenty  miles  east  of  the  Cypress  Hills.  On  the  day 
before  the  fight,  early  in  the  morning,  a  single  Piegan 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS.  135 

had  been  travelling  along  near  the  Cypress  Hills,  on 
his  way  back  from  a  journey  to  war.  He  had  only  one 
horse.  As  he  was  riding  along,  he  passed  near  a  large 
camp  of  Crows  and  Gros  Ventres.  They  saw  him  be 
fore  he  did  them  and  chased  him,  but  he  rode  in  among 
the  pines  and  got  away  from  them,  and  reached  the 
Piegan  camp  in  safety.  He  gave  the  alarm,  telling 
the  people  what  he  had  seen,  but  they  did  not  believe 
him.  They  said  :  "  This  cannot  be  true.  If  two  people 
had  said  it,  or  three,  we  would  believe  it,  but  this  man 
is  just  trying  to  frighten  us."  So  they  did  nothing. 

The  man  who  at  this  time  was  the  chief  of  the 
Piegans  was  one  of  those  who  made  the  first  treaty  with 
the  whites.  His  name  in  that  treaty  was  Sits  in  the 
Middle.  His  last  given  name  was  Many  Horses.  On 
the  day  when  the  fight  took  place,  early  in  the  morn 
ing,  before  it  was  light,  before  they  had  turned  loose 
the  horses,  the  old  chief  got  up  and  said  to  his  wife, 
"  Saddle  up,  now,  and  we  will  go  out  to  where  I  killed 
buffalo  yesterday,  and  get  some  meat  and  the  brains." 
His  wife  saddled  the  horses  and  they  started,  and  had 
ridden  quite  a  long  way  out  on  the  prairie  before  it 
became  plain  daylight. 

About  this  time  Mad  Wolf,  as  he  lay  in  his  lodge, 
heard  a  man  on  a  little  hill  just  outside  the  camp  shout 
ing  out :  "  Everybody  get  up  and  look.  A  great  herd  of 
buffalo  is  coming  this  way."  Mad  Wolf  sprang  out  of 
bed  and  rushed  out,  naked  as  he  was,  and  a  few  others 
with  him,  not  many.  They  saw  the  buffalo  coming. 
It  was  a  great  sight,  a  tremendous  throng  as  far  as  you 
could  see,  coming  toward  the  camp,  but  still  far  off. 
A  man  named  Small  Wolf  took  a  few  young  men  and 
started  out  toward  them,  to  kill  some.  After  a  little 
time  a  man,  who  stood  there  on  the  hill  looking,  said ; 


136  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

"  Hold  on.  Perhaps  those  are  not  buffalo.  Are  there 
not  some  white  animals  among  them  ?  They  may  be 
horses."  He  called  to  some  one  to  bring  him  a  field 
glass,  and  when  he  had  looked  through  it,  he  said : 
"  Oh,  it  is  just  a  multitude  of  people  coming.  They 
are  Crows  and  Gros  Ventres."  Then  they  all  shouted 
in  a  loud  voice,  for  most  of  the  people  were  still  in 
bed  :  "  Get  out  here !  The  Crows  and  Gros  Ventres 
are  coming  !  Take  courage  !  " 

A  war  party  of  Piegans  had  been  out,  and,  return 
ing,  had  camped  close  to  the  main  Piegan  camp ;  also 
some  people  had  gone  out  the  night  before  to  camp 
close  to  the  buffalo,  so  as  to  make  a  run  early  in  the 
morning.  The  enemy  attacked  these  outlying  parties 
first,  and  drove  them,  killing  some,  and  the  people  in 
camp  heard  the  shooting.  About  this  time,  Small 
Wolf  came  running  into  camp,  gasping  for  breath, 
and  called  out:  "  Come  quick  and  help  us ;  my  party 
is  almost  overcome ! "  By  this  time,  too,  the  enemy 
had  run  off  about  half  the  band  of  horses  belonging 
to  Many  Horses. 

In  those  days  the  people  were  not  well  armed. 
Some  of  them  had  guns,  but  most  had  only  bows  and 
arrows  and  lances  and  heavy  whips. 

The  Piegans  had  run  to  drive  their  horses  into 
camp,  and  as  they  came  in,  they  began  to  get  ready  to 
go  out  and  fight.  The  head  men  tried  to  persuade 
the  first  ones  to  wait,  so  that  all  should  start  out  to 
gether,  but  some  were  in  too  great  a  hurry  to  wait. 

By  this  time  the  enemy  were  close  to  the  camp  and 
on  a  little  ridge.  There  were  women  and  boys  in  the 
party.  The  Piegans  had  begun  to  fight,  but  not  very 
many  had  yet  gone  out.  A  Piegan,  named  Scream 
ing  Owl,  whose  medicine  was  very  strong,  was  the 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS.  137 

first  man  shot.  He  was  hit  in  the  belly  with  a  ball, 
but  it  did  not  go  into  his  body. 

There  was  a  Gros  Ventre  chief  who  was  very  brave. 
He  seemed  to  be  going  everywhere  among  his  peo 
ple,  encouraging  them  and  fighting  bravely  himself. 
Some  Piegan  shot  this  man,  breaking  his  leg  above  the 
knee,  and  he  fell.  Then  all  the  Crows  and  Gros 
Ventres  cried  out  in  a  mournful  way  that  the  medi 
cine  had  been  broken,  but  still  they  stood  about  their 
chief,  and  fought  there  and  would  not  leave  him,  and 
the  Piegans  could  not  drive  them. 

Not  very  long  after  the  fight  began,  some  of  the 
people  found  lying  on  the  prairie  the  bodies  of  the  old 
chief  Many  Horses  and  his  wife,  and  a  man  named 
Calf  Bull,  shouted  out:  "Now  fight  well  and  do  your 
best.  Our  old  chief  is  killed.  We  have  found  him 
over  here  dead.  Let  us  take  vengeance  on  these  ene 
mies."  The  Piegans  all  cried  out,  "  Our  father  and 
our  chief  is  killed ! "  and  they  all  made  a  noise  and 
slapped  their  mouths  and  made  a  rush  for  the 
Crows. 

In  another  part  of  the  field  one  of  the  enemy,  who 
could  talk  good  Piegan,  stepped  out  to  one  side  and 
held  up  a  pistol  and  said  :  "  Piegans,  here  is  your  great 
chief's  gun.  I  have  killed  him  and  taken  it.  Take 
courage  now."  Then  an  old  Piegan,  named  Stinking 
Head,  called  out  to  the  Piegans  :  "  Men,  women,  and 
boys !  Old  men,  young  men,  and  children !  They 
have  killed  our  great  chief  !  Take  great  courage  ! " 
Then  they  all  took  courage  and  shouted  the  warcry. 

When  the  Piegans  all  learned  that  Many  Horses 
had  been  killed,  they  made  so  fierce  a  charge  that 
the  enemy  turned  and  ran.  In  a  coulee  toward  the 
Cypress  Hills  they  had  built  some  breastworks  of 


138  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

stones,  and  when  the  Piegans  made  this  charge,  the 
Crows  and  Gros  Ventres  ran  to  get  behind  this  shelter. 
But  the  Piegans  were  so  close  behind  them  that  they 
did  not  stop  there,  but  ran  on  and  out  of  the  breast 
works  on  the  other  side,  before  they  stopped  and 
turned  to  fight.  The  Piegans  were  close  behind  them, 
and  Wolf  Calf  was  riding  ahead  of  all  the  others. 
There  was  a  Crow  running  on  foot  behind  the  rest, 
and  Wolf  Calf  dropped  his  rein  and  got  ready  to 
shoot  this  man.  He  thought  the  young  colt  he  was 
riding  was  then  running  as  fast  as  it  could,  but  when 
he  fired  his  gun  at  the  Crow,  the  horse  ran  so  much 
faster  that  before  he  could  catch  his  rein  to  stop  it, 
he  was  right  in  the  midst  of  the  Crows.  Half  a  dozen 
shot  at  him,  killing  his  horse  and  wounding  him  in  the 
leg  above  the  ankle.  As  it  happened,  none  of  the 
Crows  near  him  now  had  loaded  guns,  but  when  his 
horse  went  down,  they  all  fell  upon  him  and  began  to 
pound  him  with  their  coup  sticks  and  whip  handles. 
Then  the  Piegans  who  were  near  called  out,  "  Come ! 
let  us  make  a  charge  and  save  the  old  man  before  he 
gets  killed  ! "  They  rushed  in  and  drove  the  enemy 
back,  and  rescued  Wolf  Calf;  White  Calf,  and  two 
others,  now  dead,  pulling  him  out  of  the  melee. 

Wolf  Tail  this  day  did  two  brave  things.  Some 
Piegans  had  surrounded  a  Gros  Ventre,  who  was  called 
He  Stabbed  a  Good  Many.  This  man  still  had  his 
gun  loaded,  and  was  pointing  it  at  the  Piegans  and 
keeping  them  off,  for  they  were  afraid  of  him.  Wolf 
Tail  was  the  last  of  the  Piegans  to  get  to  him.  He 
rode  up  to  the  Gros  Ventre,  jumped  off  his  horse, 
snatched  the  gun,  and  took  it  away  from  him.  Then 
he  called  out  to  the  Piegans :  "  Come  on  now ;  there 
is  no  longer  any  danger.  Come  up  and  kill  him!" 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS.  139 

Wolf  Tail  walked  away  from  the  Gros  Ventre,  who 
was  then  killed  by  one  of  the  Piegans. 

After  this  he  came  up  with  another  Gros  Ventre, 
who  was  shooting  arrows.  He  also  had  a  lance.  Wolf 
Tail  rode  up  behind  him,  jumped  off  his  horse,  and 
seized  the  man.  He  took  away  from  him  his  lance 
and  arrows,  pulled  out  his  pistol,  and  shot  him. 

The  Crows  and  Gros  Ventres  were  now  all  running 
away,  and  the  Piegans  were  following  and  killing 
them.  They  began  with  those  who  were  on  foot,  cut 
ting  them  off  a  few  at  a  time,  killing  the  men  and 
taking  the  women  and  boys  prisoners.  There  are  now 
some  middle-aged  men  in  the  Piegan  camp  who  were 
taken  in  this  fight. 

At  last  the  footmen  were  all  killed,  and  they  made 
a  charge  on  the  mounted  men.  They  cut  off  a  bunch  of 
these  from  the  main  body,  and  rushed  them  toward  a 
cut  coulee  and  over  a  steep  bank ;  but  when  the  Piegans 
saw  the  enemy  falling  down  the  side  of  the  coulee,  they 
rode  around  it  and  caught  those  who  were  left  alive 
as  they  were  coming  out,  and  killed  them  in  bunches 
of  four  or  five.  They  kept  following  the  main  body 
for  hours,  and  at  last  they  had  been  running  and  fight 
ing  so  long  that  all  the  Indians  were  now  very  tired, 
and  they  could  no  longer  run,  but  the  enemy  were 
walking  away  and  the  Piegans  walking  after  them. 
The  enemy's  horses  would  give  out  and  stop,  and  the 
Piegans  would  kill  the  riders,  for  by  this  time  the 
Crows  and  Gros  Ventres  were  so  frightened  that  they 
no  longer  showed  fight,  and  the  Piegans  had  no 
trouble  in  killing  them.  Some  one  overtook  an  old 
Gros  Ventre,  who  called  out  :  "  Spare  me  !  I  am 
old  ! "  The  Piegan's  heart  was  touched  and  he  was 
going  to  spare  him,  but  another  man  ran  up  and  said, 


THE   STORY   OF  THE   INDIAN. 

"  Oh,  yes,  we  will  spare  you,"  and  he  blew  out  his 
brains. 

Very  few  of  the  enemy  were  killed  with  guns.  It 
was  not  necessary.  They  killed  some  by  running  over 
them  with  their  horses,  others  with  bows  and  arrows, 
others  with  hatchets,  some  they  lanced,  pounded  some 
on  the  heads  with  whips,  stabbed  some,  and  killed 
some  with  stones.  They  followed  them  about  eighteen 
miles.  The  trail  that  they  made  was  a  mile  and  a 
half  wide,  and  all  along  this  the  enemy  were  dropped, 
here  two  or  three,  there  half  a  dozen,  as  thick  as  buf 
falo  after  a  killing. 

At  last  they  reached  the  gap  in  the  Cypress  Hills 
where  the  pines  are,  and  the  enemy  got  in  among  the 
timber.  Then  the  Piegans  said  :  "  Come.  That  will 
do.  We  have  killed  enough.  Let  us  stop  here  and 
go  back."  So  they  returned  to  their  camp.  They 
counted  as  they  were  going  back  more  than  four  hun 
dred  dead  of  the  enemy,  and  there  must  have  been 
many  more  who  had  crawled  into  the  grass  and  died. 

After  the  fight  was  over  and  the  Piegans  had 
turned  back,  a  Gros  Ventre  woman,  whose  husband 
had  been  killed  and  her  daughter  captured,  made  up 
her  mind  that  she  would  go  back  and  look  for  them. 
When  she  got  into  the  timber,  she  said  to  the  others 
who  were  with  her,  "  My  man  is  killed  and  my 
daughter  is  gone,  and  I  am  going  down  into  the  Pie- 
gan  camp  to  find  out  what  has  become  of  her."  She 
still  had  a  horse  and  rode  down  the  mountain  after 
the  Piegans.  Lying  on  the  prairie  there  was  a  Gros 
Ventre  Indian,  who  had  been  knocked  down  and 
scalped,  and  had  pretended  that  he  was  dead.  Some 
time  after  the  Piegans  had  gone  he  opened  his  eyes, 
and  as  he  did  so,  he  saw  this  woman  riding  by  him. 


PRAIRIE  BATTLEFIELDS.  141 

He  called  out  to  her  and  asked  her  to  take  him  back 
to  the  Gros  Ventres,  but  she  refused,  telling  him  that 
she  was  going  to  look  for  her  daughter.  The  man 
got  up  on  his  feet,  but  the  skin  of  his  forehead  hung 
down  over  his  eyes  so  that  it  blinded  him,  and  he  had 
to  hold  it  up  with  one  hand  in  order  to  see.  He 
walked  toward  the  woman,  who  had  stopped,  talking 
to  her,  and  when  he  had  come  close  to  her,  he  made  a 
rush  toward  her,  so  as  to  get  hold  of  the  horse's  tail 
and  take  the  horse  away  from  the  woman,  so  that  he 
could  ride  after  his  people.  But  when  he  tried  to 
grasp  the  tail,  he  reached  out  with  both  hands  to 
catch  it,  and  the  skin  dropped  over  his  eyes  and 
blinded  him,  and  he  stumbled  and  fell,  and  the  woman 
avoided  him,  and  presently  when  he  got  up  and  lifted 
his  skin,  the  woman  was  a  good  way  off.  She  rode  on 
to  the  Piegan  camp  and  found  her  daughter  there, 
and  both  were  adopted  into  the  tribe  and  died  there. 

Up  to  the  time  when  they  returned  to  their  own 
camp,  the  Piegans  had  not  known  how  many  of  their 
own  people  they  had  lost.  Now  they  learned  that 
three  great  chiefs,  six  warriors,  and  one  woman  had 
been  killed.  Then  all  the  Piegans  cried,  because  they 
thought  so  much  of  their  chief  Many  Horses.  His 
relations  spoke  to  Four  Bears,  the  camp  orator,  and  he 
went  out  through  the  camp  and  called  out  and  said  : 
"  Let  every  person  bring  one  blanket  each  for  the 
burial  of  this  chief,  and  each  one  who  brings  a  blanket 
shall  take  a  rope  and  catch  one  horse  out  of  his  band." 
The  people  did  this,  and  gave  Many  Horses  a  great 
funeral,  for  all  liked  him  and  his  wife,  because  they 
had  been  kind  and  generous  to  everybody. 

Some  time  after  the  funeral,  Four  Bears  went  out 
again  through  the  camp  and  shouted  out :  "  Bring  out 


142  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

your  captives,  your  women  and  children  that  you  have 
taken.  Bring  out  all  the  things  that  you  have  taken — 
shields,  guns,  arrows,  bows,  scalps,  medicine  pipes; 
everything  of  value  that  you  have  taken — and  put 
them  in  a  pile  so  that  we  can  look  at  them."  The 
people  did  this,  and  it  made  a  nne  show.  When  all 
these  things  were  spread  out,  some  great  warrior  went 
along  the  line  and  took  up  each  thing  in  turn,  as  he 
came  to  it,  and  shouted  out  the  name  of  the  person 
who  had  taken  it,  so  that  everybody  would  know  who 
was  brave.  This  was  a  coup.  Even  women  and  chil 
dren  counted  coups  on  the  things  they  had  taken. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

IMPLEMENTS   AND   INDUSTRIES. 

THE  white  man  found  the  Indian  a  savage  in  the 
stone  age  of  development.  For  the  most  part  the  flesh 
of  beasts  and  the  wild  fruits  of  the  earth  nourished 
him,  skins  sheltered  and  clad  him,  wood,  stone,  and 
bone  armed  and  equipped  him.  He  had  no  knowledge 
of  metals,  but  he  had  learned  how  to  fashion  the  stone 
mace  or  warclub,  to  chip  out  flint  knives  and  arrow- 
points,  to  tan  skins,  to  bake  pots,  and  had  invented 
that  complex  weapon  the  bow  and  arrow.  He  had  a 
hunting  companion,  the  dog,  which  was  also  his  beast 
of  burden. 

No  one  now  can  tell  the  story  of  the  Indian's  ad 
vance  in  culture  :  what  was  the  history  of  the  bow  or 
the  store-pointed  arrow ;  who  first  devised  the  lodge 
or  the  dog  travois.  All  these  things  are  said  to  have 
been  given  them  by  the  Creator,  who  had  pity  on  his 
children,  once  without  means  of  defence  against  the 
stronger  beasts,  and  who  starved  when  roots  and  ber 
ries  were  not  to  be  had.  For  tradition  tells  us  of  a 
time  between  the  creation  of  the  red  man  and  the 
coming  of  the  white  man,  when  the  Indian  lacked 
even  the  simple  weapons  that  his  Creator  gave  him 
later.  Some  of  the  stories  say  that  then  men  had  no 
hands,  only  paws,  armed  with  long  claws  like  a  bear, 
and  that  with  these  they  unearthed  the  roots  of  the 

143 


144  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

prairie,  or  drew  down  to  their  faces  the  branches  of 
the  berry  bushes  laden  with  ripe  fruit.  Then,  indeed, 
the  people  were  poor,  weak,  and  ignorant,  and  had  no 
means  of  getting  a  living.  Then  they  must  have  been 
a  prey  to  the  wild  creatures.  The  buffalo  are  said  to 
have  eaten  them,  and  not  only  the  buffalo  but  the  deer 
and  the  antelope  as  well.  After  this,  the  stories  go  on, 
they  learned  the  art  of  making  snares  and  traps,  in 
which  they  took  the  smaller  wild  creatures,  whose  flesh 
furnished  them  a  part  of  their  subsistence,  and  whose 
skins  were  their  first  clothing.  The  club  no  doubt 
they  already  had,  and  from  this  the  evolution  of  the 
stone-headed  axe  or  hammer  was  natural.  With  these 
they  pounded  to  death  the  animals  that  they  caught 
in  their  snares.  Perhaps  the  knife  was  next  invented, 
and  then  the  lance — which  is  only  a  knife  with  a  long 
handle — and  this  may  sometimes  have  been  thrown 
from  the  hand.  Last,  and  by  far  the  greatest  of  all, 
must  have  come  the  wonderful  discovery  of  the  bow 
and  arrow.  But  of  the  manner  of  these  inventions 
and  of  their  sequence  no  memory  or  tradition  now 
remains. 

For  the  most  part  the  Indians  of  the  West  lived  in 
skin  lodges.  This  was  partly  because  such  dwellings 
were  warm,  dry,  and  easily  obtained,  but  especially  be 
cause  they  were  light  and  convenient  and  could  readily 
be  moved  about  from  place  to  place,  and  so  were  in 
all  respects  suited  to  the  needs  of  a  nomadic  people. 
But  not  all  the  Indians  were  dwellers  in  tents.  The 
evolution  of  the  house  had  progressed  far  beyond  the 
single-roomed  shelter  of  grass  or  bark  or  skins.  The 
Indians  of  the  East  had  large  connected  houses  of 
poles,  sometimes  fortified.  The  Pawnees  and  Mandans 
built  great  sod  or  dirt  houses,  in  which  many  families 


IMPLEMENTS   AND   INDUSTRIES.  145 

lived  in  common,  the  sleeping  places  about  the  walls 
being  separated  by  permanent  wooden  partitions,  while 
in  front  of  each  a  curtain  was  let  down  so  as  to  form 
an  actual  room.  Further  to  the  south  are  still  in  use 
the  many-roomed,  many-storied  houses  of  the  Pueblo 
people,  which  were  the  highest  development  of  the 
house  among  the  Indians  north  of  Mexico. 

Tradition  warrants  us  in  believing  that  many  tribes 
who  now  live  in  lodges  once  had  permanent  houses, 
and  that  the  exclusive  use  of  skin  lodges  among  the 
plains  tribes  may  have  come  about  in  comparatively 
recent  times.  Many  of  these  tribes  have  lived  on  these 
plains  for  a  short  time  only — say  two  or  three  cen 
turies — having  migrated  thither  from  some  earlier 
home,  and  many  of  them  have  traditions  of  a  time 
when  they  lived  in  permanent  houses,  though  often 
the  story  is  so  vague  that  nothing  is  known  of  the 
character  of  these  dwellings.  The  Pawnees,  on  the 
other  hand,  say  that  in  their  ancient  home — which 
was  probably  on  the  Pacific  slope — they  dwelt  in 
houses  built  of  stone. 

The  highest  development  of  architecture  within 
the  historic  period  was  in  the  south,  as  shown  by  the 
ruins  of  Central  America,  Mexico,  and  Arizona ;  yet 
tribes  who  lived  in  the  north,  whether  on  the  Atlan 
tic  or  Pacific  slopes,  had  permanent  dwellings,  and  it 
seems  probable  that  those  which  we  have  known  only 
as  nomads  may  have  retrograded  in  this  respect,  and 
lost  the  art  of  building  which  they  once  possessed. 

The  common  movable  home  of  the  plains  tribes  was 
the  conical  tipi  made  of  a  number  of  dressed  buffalo 
skins,  sewed  together  and  supported  by  about  sixteen 
lodge  poles.  To  the  north,  among  the  Lake  Winni 
peg  Chippeways,  the  tipi  covering  is  of  birch  bark, 


146  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

which,  when  done  up  for  transportation,  is  in  seven 
rolls.  The  largest  and  longest  when  unrolled  reaches 
around  the  lodge  poles  at  the  ground  from  one  side  of 
the  door  to  the  other ;  the  one  next  in  length  fits 
around  the  lodge  poles  above  the  lower  strip,  lapping 
a  little  over  it,  so  as  to  shed  the  rain.  One  still  shorter 
goes  on  above  this,  and  so  on  to  the  top  of  the  cone. 
At  both  ends  of  each  strip  there  is  a  lath-like  stick  of 
wood  to  keep  the  bark  from  fraying  or  splitting.  The 
pieces  of  which  these  strips  are  composed  are  neatly 
sewed  together  with  tamarak  roots — wattap'.  There 
are  no  wings  or  ears  about  the  smokeholes  of  such  a 
lodge,  but  these  are  not  needed  in  the  timber  where  it 
is  used. 

The  large  sod  houses  of  the  Pawnees,  Arickaras,  and 
Mandans,  have  often  been  described.  The  Wichitas 
build  odd-looking  beehive-like  dwellings  of  grass  ;  the 
hogans  of  the  Navajoes  are  of  brush  and  sticks  ;  both 
walls  and  roofs  of  the  houses  of  the  northwest  coast 
Indians  are  made  of  shakes,  split  from  the  cedar.  On 
the  whole,  the  difference  between  the  homes  of  the 
various  tribes  is  very  great. 

Food  supply  and  defence  against  enemies  depended 
on  the  warrior's  weapons.  These  were  his  most  precious 
possessions,  and  he  gave  much  care  to  their  manufac 
ture.  Knowing  nothing  of  metals,  he  made  his  edge 
tools  of  sharpened  stones.  Let  us  see  how  the  arrow- 
maker  worked. 

The  camp  is  sleepy,  for  it  is  midday  and  the  heat 
of  the  blazing  sun  has  driven  almost  every  one  to  seek 
the  shade.  The  few  young  men  who  have  not  gone 
out  to  hunt  are  asleep  in  the  lodges,  and  most  of  the 
women  have  put  aside  for  the  time  their  work  on  the 
hides  and  meat,  and  are  sitting  in  the  lodges  sewing 


IMPLEMENTS  AND  INDUSTRIES.  147 

moccasins,  or  else  are  pounding  choke  cherries,  seated 
on  the  ground  beneath  skins  spread  over  poles  to  make 
a  shade.  Only  here  and  there  one,  old  and  very  indus 
trious,  is  hard  at  work,  careless  of  the  heat.  Even 
the  children  for  the  time  have  stopped  their  noise  and 
retired  to  the  fringe  of  bushes  along  the  stream,  where 
they  are  playing  quietly.  Near  a  lodge,  small  and 
weather-beaten,  two  men  seated  under  a  shade  are 
hard  at  work.  Each  holds  between  his  knees  a  block 
of  stone,  from  which,  by  light  sharp  blows  of  a  small 
stone  hammer,  he  is  chipping  off  triangular  flakes  of 
flint  for  making  arrowheads.  The  material  used  by 
one  of  the  men  is  a  black  obsidian  obtained  by  trade 
from  the  Crows  to  the  south,  while  the  other  has  a 
piece  of  milky  chalcedony  picked  up  in  the  moun 
tains  to  the  west.  Each  of  these  blocks  has  been 
sweated  by  being  buried  in  wet  earth,  over  which  a 
fire  has  been  built,  the  object  of  this  treatment  being 
to  bring  to  light  all  the  cracks  and  checks  in  the  stone, 
so  that  no  unnecessary  labour  need  be  performed  on  a 
piece  too  badly  cracked  to  be  profitably  worked.  As 
the  workmen  knock  off  the  chips,  they  turn  the  blocks, 
so  that  after  a  little  they  become  roughly  cylindrical, 
always  growing  smaller  and  smaller,  until  at  length 
each  is  too  small  to  furnish  more  flakes.  They  are 
then  put  aside. 

Each  man  now  collects  all  the  flakes  he  had 
knocked  off,  and,  piling  them  together  on  one  corner 
of  his  robe,  carefully  examines  each  one.  Some  are 
rejected  at  a  glance,  some  put  in  a  pile  together  as 
satisfactory,  while  over  others  the  arrow-maker  pon 
ders  for  a  while,  as  if  in  doubt.  Presently  he  seems 
to  have  satisfied  himself,  and  prepares  for  his  second 
operation.  For  this  he  takes  in  his  left  palm  a  pad  of 
11 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

buckskin  large  enough  to  cover  and  protect  it  while 
holding  the  sharp  flake,  while  over  his  right  hand  he 
slips  another  piece  of  tanned  hide  something  like  a 
sailmaker's  "  palm,"  and  used  for  the  same  purpose. 
Against  his  "  palm  "  the  arrow-maker  places  the  head 
of  a  small  tool — a  straight  piece  of  deer  or  antelope 
horn  or  of  bone — about  four  inches  long,  and  pressing 
its  point  against  the  side  of  the  piece  of  flint  held  in 
the  other  hand,  he  flakes  off  one  little  chip  of  the 
stone  and  then  another  close  to  it,  thus  passing  along 
the  edge  of  the  unformed  flint  until  one  side  of  it  is 
straight,  and  then  along  the  other.  He  works  quickly 
and  apparently  without  much  care,  except  when  he  is 
near  the  point,  for  this  is  a  delicate  place,  and  care 
lessness  or  haste  here  may  endanger  the  arrowhead ; 
for,  if  its  point  should  be  broken,  it  is  good  for  noth 
ing.  Sometimes  an  unseen  check  will  cause  the  head 
to  break  across  without  warning,  and  the  labour  ex 
pended  on  this  particular  piece  is  thus  wasted.  But 
usually  the  arrow-maker  works  rapidly  and  spoils  but 
few  points.  After  the  head  is  shaped,  there  are  often 
left  some  thin  projecting  edges  which  mar  its  sym 
metry  and  add  nothing  to  its  effectiveness.  These  are 
broken  off  either  by  pressure  or  by  a  sharp  blow  with 
some  light  instrument,  such  as  a  bit  of  bone  or  of  hard 
wood. 

The  making  of  these  stone  points  has  now  been 
almost  entirely  forgotten,  but  I  have  seen  a  beautiful 
and  perfect  dagger,  six  or  eight  inches  long,  made 
from  a  piece  of  glass  bottle. 

There  is  a  wide  variation  in  the  shape  and  size  of 
these  stone  points.  Some  are  very  small,  others  large, 
some  are  fine  and  delicate,  and  others  coarse  and 
clumsy.  The  edges  are  usually  regular  and  fairly 


IMPLEMENTS  AtfD  INDUSTRIES. 

smooth,  but  sometimes  serrated.  A  wound  inflicted 
by  one  of  them  is  said  to  have  been  much  more  serious 
than  that  inflicted  by  a  hoop-iron  point,  and  the  In 
dian  of  to-day  believes  that  the  stone  points  had  some 
what  the  effect  of  a  poisoned  arrowhead.  There  is  a 
grain  of  foundation  for  this,  since  the  stone  point 
would  make  a  ragged  wound,  and  the  point  if  deeply 
buried  in  the  flesh  could  not  easily  be  extracted  or 
pushed  on  through,  but  would  readily  become  detached 
from  the  arrow  shaft.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would 
make  a  clean  wound,  which  would  heal  much  more 
easily  than  a  bullet  wound. 

These  arrowheads  were  roughly  triangular  in 
shape,  but  often  had  a  short  shank  for  attachment  to 
the  shaft.  This  shank,  or  the  middle  part  of  the  short 
side  of  the  triangle,  was  set  into  a  notch  in  the  shaft, 
fastened  by  a  glue  made  from  the  hoofs  of  the  buffalo, 
and  made  additionally  secure  by  being  whipped  in 
place  by  fine  sinew  strings,  put  on  wet. 

The  arrow  shafts  are  not  less  important  than  the 
heads.  They  should  be  straight,  strong,  and  heavy,  and 
for  this  reason  year-old  shoots  of  the  dogwood,  cherry, 
or  service  berry  make  the  best  arrow  wood.  The  Indians 
of  the  southwest  use  reeds  of  the  cane,  and  with  them 
the  shaft  is  often  composed  of  three  or  more  pieces. 
Some  tribes  use  shoots  of  the  willow,  but  this  warps 
so  readily  and  is  so  light  and  weak  that  it  will  hardly 
be  employed  if  any  other  wood  can  be  had.  The 
length  and  thickness  of  the  shaft  varies  with  the  tribe 
— as  does  also  the  manner  of  feathering,  of  fastening 
on  the  heads,  and  of  painting — but  it  almost  always 
has  two  or  three  winding  grooves  throughout  its 
length,  the  purpose  of  which  is  said  to  be  to  facilitate 
the  flow  of  blood,  and  probably  also  the  arrow's  en- 


150  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

trance  into  the  flesh.  The  arrow  shafts,  after  being 
cut  and  scraped  free  from  bark,  are  bound  together  in 
bundles  and  hung  up  to  dry  in  the  lodge,  where  it  is 
warm.  When  partly  seasoned,  they  are  taken  down 
and  picked  over.  Those  which  are  not  entirely 
straight  are  handled,  bent  this  way  and  that,  and  the 
bundle  is  then  again  hung  up,  and  left  until  the  wood 
is  thoroughly  seasoned,  when  the  shafts  are  again  gone 
over  and  'the  bad  ones  rejected.  Usually  they  are 
brought  down  to  the  proper  thickness  by  scraping  with 
a  bit  of  flint  or  glass,  or  with  a  knife,  but  often  a  slab 
of  grooved  sandstone  is  used  for  this  purpose.  This 
has  the  same  effect  as  if  they  were  sandpapered  down. 
The  grooves  in  the  shaft  are  made  by  passing  it  through 
a  hole  bored  through  a  rib  or  a  vertebra's  dorsal  spine, 
or  sometimes,  it  is  said,  by  pressure  of  the  teeth,  in 
which  the  wood  is  held  while  being  bent.  This  hole 
is  just  large  enough  for  the  shaft  to  pass  through, 
and  is  circular,  except  for  one  or  two  projections, 
which  press  into  the  wood  and  cut  out  the  grooves. 
The  feathers  are  usually  three  in  number,  put  on  with 
glue,  but  wound  above  and  below  with  sinew.  The 
notch  for  the  string  is  deep  and  in  the  same  plane 
with  the  arrow's  head.  The  private  mark  of  the  owner 
is  usually  found  close  to  the  end  of  the  feathers.  It 
may  be  a  fashion  of  painting  or  some  arrangement  of 
stained  feathers.  The  feathers  are  rarely  two  or  four, 
and  their  length  varies  greatly  with  the  tribe.  They 
are  usually  taken  from  birds  of  prey. 

The  most  important  part  of  the  warrior's  equip 
ment  was  the  bow,  and  over  no  part  of  it  was  more 
time  and  labour  spent.  In  every  lodge  there  were 
kept  sticks  of  bow  wood,  some  of  them  so  far  ad 
vanced  in  manufacture  that  but  little  labour  was  re- 


IMPLEMENTS  AND  INDUSTRIES.  151 

quired  to  complete  them.  While  the  bow  was  usually 
made  of  wood,  bone  and  horn  were  also  used.  Those 
of  bone  were  fashioned  of  two  or  more  pieces  of  the 
rib  of  some  large  animal — an  elk  or  a  buffalo — neatly 
fitted  and  spliced  together.  Those  of  elk  horn  were 
also  made  of  several  pieces,  fitted  and  glued  together, 
and  wrapped  with  sinew.  Buffalo  or  sheep  horn 
bows  were  made  of  several  pieces,  which  were  boiled 
or  steamed  and  straightened  before  being  put  to 
gether.  Bows  made  of  horn  or  bone  were  very  stiff, 
and  sometimes  could  hardly  be  drawn  by  a  white  man, 
though  handled  by  their  owners  with  apparent  ease. 
Their  manufacture  was  a  long,  slow  process,  and  they 
were  highly  valued,  and  it  was  not  easy  to  induce  an 
owner  to  sell  one.  They  were  made  chiefly  among 
the  mountain  Indians,  such  as  the  Crows,  Snakes,  and 
Utes,  but  were  often  traded  to  other  tribes. 

Almost  all  the  native  woods  in  one  section  of  the 
country  or  another  were  used  for  bows.  In  later 
times  hickory  was  a  favourite  wood,  and  old  oxbows 
were  highly  valued  by  the  Indians,  who  used  to  steam. 
and  straighten  them  and  then  make  them  into  bows. 
Other  woods  employed  were  the  osage  orange,  ash, 
cedar,  yew,  choke  cherry,  and  willow.  The  wood  was 
seasoned  with  care,  worked  down  carefully,  straight 
ened  again  and  again,  oiled  and  handled,  and,  finally, 
as  the  last  operation,  the  nocks  were  cut,  the  sinew 
backing  applied,  a  wrapping  of  buckskin  secured 
about  the  grip  of  the  bow,  and  it  was  finished.  Good 
bows  of  plains  and  mountain  tribes  were  always  backed 
with  sinew,  which  added  much  to  the  spring  and 
strength  of  the  weapon.  Some  tribes  toward  the 
Pacific  coast  backed  their  bows  with  salmon  skin. 
The  bowstring  was  always  made  of  twisted  sinew. 


152  MU  STOEY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

The  bow  and  arrows  were  carried  in  a  bow  case  and 
quiver,  fastened  together  and  slung  over  the  shoulder. 
The  covering  of  these  was  often  otter  or  panther  skin, 
the  hide  of  a  buffalo  calf,  or,  in  later  times,  of  domestic 
cattle. 

Among  most  of  the  plains  tribes  the  use  of  the  bow 
was  discontinued  long  ago,  and  at  the  present  time 
only  boys'  bows  are  in  use.  The  old  familiarity  and 
skill  with  the  arm  are  lost.  In  old  times,  however,  the 
bow  at  short  range  was  an  extremely  effective  weapon, 
and  a  skilled  archer  could  shoot  so  rapidly  that  he  had 
no  difficulty  in  keeping  several  horizontally  directed 
arrows  in  the  air  at  the  same  time.  The  bow  could 
be  shot  more  rapidly  and  effectively  than  a  revolving 
pistol. 

The  power  of  the  bow  is  well  known.  There  are 
perfectly  well  authenticated  instances  where  two  buf 
falo,  running  side  by  side,  have  been  killed  by  the  same 
arrow,  and  it  was  not  uncommon  for  an  arrow  to  go 
so  far  through  an  animal  that  the  point  and  a  part 
of  the  shaft  projected  on  the  other  side.  The  arrow 
could  be  shot  to  a  distance  of  three  or  four  hundred 
yards. 

The  stone  axe,  the  maul,  and  the  lance  were  all 
simple  weapons.  The  axehead  was  usually  of  soft 
stone,  ground  down  to  an  edge,  and  a  groove  was 
worked  out  at  right  angles  to  its  length,  so  that  the 
green  withe  by  which  it  was  fastened  to  the  handle 
should  not  slip  off.  Over  this,  green  rawhide  was 
sewed  with  sinew,  and  this  hide  usually  extended  over 
the  whole  length  of  the  handle.  The  maul  or  war- 
club  was  made  of  a  grooved  oval  stone,  fastened  to  a 
handle  in  the  same  way  as  the  axe.  The  club  had  a 
long  handle  and  carried  a  small  stone,  no  larger  than 


.IMPLEMENTS  AND  INDUSTRIES.  153 

a  man's  fist.  The  woman's  maul  was  short  handled 
and  the  stone  was  large  and  heavy.  The  lancehead 
was  made  of  flint,  flaked  sharp,  and  lashed  to  a  shaft 
with  sinew  or  wet  rawhide  strings. 

A  very  important  part  of  the  warrior's  outfit  was 
the  shield,  with  which  he  stopped  or  turned  aside  the 
arrows  of  his  enemy.  It  was  usually  circular  in  shape, 
and  was  made  of  the  thick,  shrunken  hide  of  a  buffalo 
bull's  neck.  It  was  heavy  enough  to  turn  the  ball 
from  an  old-fashioned  smooth-bored  gun.  The  shield 
was  usually  highly  ornamented,  and  often  had  the 
warrior's  "  medicine "  painted  on  it,  and  was  often 
fringed  with  eagle  feathers  about  its  circumfer 
ence. 

Clothing  was  made  of  skins  tanned  with  or  without 
the  fur.  Buffalo  tribes,  as  a  rule,  wore  clothing  made 
for  the  most  part  of  the  skins  of  this  animal,  and  used 
comparatively  little  buckskin.  As  their  work  was 
chiefly  on  these  large  heavy  skins,  they  were  poor  tan 
ners  by  comparison  with  those  tribes  which  lived  in 
the  mountains  and  made  their  clothing  largely  of  deer 
skin.  The  leggings,  shirts,  and  women's  dresses,  have 
often  been  described.  Moccasins  for  summer  wear 
covered  the  foot  only,  not  coming  up  over  the  ankle, 
but  winter  moccasins  were  provided  with  a  high  flap 
which  tied  about  the  ankle  under  the  legging.  Some 
tribes  used  moccasins  made  wholly  of  deer  skin  and 
without  a  sole ;  with  others  a  parfleche  sole  was  al 
ways  provided.  They  were  ornamented  in  front  with 
stained  porcupine  quills,  or  in  later  times  with  beads ; 
sometimes,  too,  there  are  little  fringes  about  the  ankle 
or  down  the  front,  and  two  little  tags  from  the  heels. 
All  the  sewing  of  this  clothing  was  done  with  thread 
made  of  sinew,  and  in  old  times  with  awls  made  of 


154:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

bone  or  stiff  thorns.  Such  sewing  was  very  enduring, 
and  the  dressed  skin  would  wear  out  before  the  seams 
gave  way. 

Many  of  the  tribes — especially  those  to  the  south — 
made  a  simple  pottery,  either  formed  on  a  mould  or 
else  within  or  without  a  frame  of  basket-work,  which 
sometimes  was  afterward  burned  away  in  the  baking. 
The  best  pottery,  that  of  the  southwest,  was  often,  if 
not  always,  made  by  coiling  a  long  rope  of  clay,  tier 
above  tier,  until  the  vessel  was  completed.  Some  of 
the  ware  so  made  was  singularly  graceful  and  perfect. 
Often  it  was  ornamented  by  indented  markings  drawn 
while  the  clay  was  soft,  or  by  figures  painted  before 
the  baking.  With  the  advent  of  the  whites  and  the 
introduction  of  vessels  of  metal,  the  manufacture  of 
such  pottery  ceased,  and  it  is  now  carried  on  in  but 
very  few  tribes. 

Among  the  northern  tribes,  where  pottery  was  least 
known,  ladles,  spoons,  bowls,  and  dishes  were  usually 
formed  from  horn  or  wood.  The  horns  of  the  buffalo, 
the  mountain  sheep,  and  the  white  goat  were  used  for 
these  purposes,  those  of  the  last-named  species  being 
often  elaborately  carved  and  ornamented  by  the  north 
west  coast  tribes.  Plates  or  dishes  made  of  pieces  of 
buffalo  horn  fitted  and  sewn  together  with  sinew  were 
common.  Excrescences  on  tree  trunks,  knocked  off 
and  hollowed  out,  made  good  wooden  bowls.  Stone 
pots  and  ollas  and  stone  mortars  were  common,  es 
pecially  on  the  southwest  coast,  as  were  also  the  basalt 
mills  used  for  grinding  the  corn,  metates.  Some  plains 
tribes  used  wooden  mortars,  usually  made  of  oak  or 
some  other  hard  wood,  with  a  long  and  heavy  wood 
en  pestle.  The  Lake  Winnipeg  Chippeways  still 
use  a  mill  of  two  circular  stones,  revolving  one  upon 


•IMPLEMENTS  AND  INDUSTRIES.  155 

the  other,  but  the  idea  of  this  may  have  been  bor 
rowed  from  the  whites.  By  some  tribes  cups  and 
buckets  were  made  from  the  lining  of  the  buffalo's 
paunch,  and  many  others  wove  basketware,  so  tight 
that  it  would  hold  water,  and  such  vessels  were  even 
used  to  cook  in,  the  water  being  heated  with  hot 
stones. 

Implements  for  tanning — fleshers — were  made  of 
stone,  with  the  edges  flaked  off  until  they  were  sharp, 
or  of  elkhorn  steamed  and  bent  at  one  end  for  three 
inches  at  right  angles  to  the  course  of  the  antler  and 
sharpened,  or  of  bone,  as  the  cannon  bone  of  a  buffalo, 
cut  diagonally  so  as  to  give  a  sharp  edge,  and  notched 
along  this  sharpened  border.  All  these  were  servicea 
ble,  and  were  commonly  employed. 

The  different  tribes  had  but  slight  knowledge  of 
the  textile  art,  and  this  knowledge  seems  to  have  been 
greatest  in  the  south  and  on  the  coast.  Many  tribes 
wove  baskets  and  mats  of  reeds  and  grass,  yet  the 
plains  Indians,  who  had  in  the  fleece  of  the  buffalo  an 
excellent  material  for  weaving  cloth,  never  seem  to 
have  got  any  further  than  to  twist  ropes  from  it.  The 
Mokis  of  the  south  and  the  coast  tribes  of  the  north 
practised  the  aboriginal  art  of  blanket-weaving,  and 
the  Navajoes,  after  they  obtained  their  flocks  from 
the  Spaniards,  took  up  this  art  and  now  practise  it  in 
singular  perfection.  The  blanket- weaving  of  the  north 
is  less  skilful.  The  rounded  hats  woven  of  cedar  bark 
by  the  northwest  coast  tribes  deserve  mention.  The 
plains  tribes  plaited  ropes  of  rawhide;  those  of  the 
northern  coast  make  ropes  of  cedar  bark,  and  long 
fishing-lines  by  knotting  together  the  slender  stems  of 
the  kelp. 

Three  vehicles  were  known  to  the  primitive  In- 


156  THE  STOIIY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

dian — the  travels  in  the  south  and  the  sledge  in  the 
north  for  land  travel,  and  the  canoe  wherever  there 
were  water  ways.  The  sledge  could  be  used  only  when 
the  ground  was  snow -covered,  and  it  was  scarcely 
known  south  of  the  parallel  of  50°.  In  primitive 
times  both  sledge  and  travois  were  drawn  by  dogs,  but 
as  soon  as  horses  were  obtained,  the  dogs  were  freed 
from  the  travois,  and  horses  drew  the  loads.  From 
time  immemorial  the  travois  has  been  used  by  the 
plains  savage  to  transport  his  possessions,  and  it  is 
only  when  he  makes  his  first  slow  step  toward  civili 
zation  that  he  exchanges  it  for  a  wagon.  What  his 
canoe  is  to  the  Indian  who  traverses  the  water  ways  of 
the  north,  or  his  dog  sledge  to  the  fur-clad  Innuit,  the 
travois  *  is  to  the  dweller  on  the  plains.  Where  in 
use  to-day,  it  consists  of  two  poles  about  the  size  of 
lodge  poles,  crossed  near  their  smaller  ends,  and  toward 
the  larger  held  in  place  by  crosspieces  three  feet  apart. 
The  space  between  these  two  cross  braces  is  occupied 
by  a  stiff  rawhide  netting  running  from  one  pole  to 
the  other,  and  strong  enough  to  carry  a  weight  of  sev 
eral  hundred  pounds.  The  crossed  ends  of  the  poles 
are  placed  over  a  horse's  withers  just  at  the  front  of 
the  saddle,  and  the  separated  braced  ends  drag  upon 
the  ground  behind.  The  body  and  hips  of  the  horse 
are  in  the  empty  space  between  the  angles  at  the 
withers  and  the  first  crosspiece,  which  comes  close 
behind  the  hocks.  Bearing  a  part  of  the  weight  on 
his  shoulders,  the  horse  drags  this  rude  contrivance 

*  This  is  a  French  trapper  word,  perhaps  a  corruption  of 
travers  or  d  travers,  across,  referring  to  the  crossing  of  the 
poles  over  the  horse's  withers.  It  hardly  seems  that  it  can  come 
from  travaux  or  trqineau,  as  has  been  suggested. 


I-  r-- 


IMPLEMENTS  AND  INDUSTRIES.  157 

and  its  load  over  the  rough  prairie,  along  narrow 
mountain  trails  or  through  hurrying  torrents,  with 
rarely  a  mishap.  On  the  platform  of  the  travois  are 
carried  loads  of  meat  from  the  buffalo-killing,  the  va 
rious  possessions  of  the  owner  in  moving  camp  from 
place  to  place,  a  sick  or  wounded  individual  too  weak 
to  ride,  and  sometimes  a  wickerwork  cage  shaped  like 
a  sweat  lodge,  in  which  are  confined  small  children, 
or  even  a  family  of  tiny  puppies  with  their  mother. 
Things  that  cannot  be  conveniently  packed  on  the 
backs  of  the  horses  are  put  upon  the  travois.  Some 
times  the  travois  bears  the  dead,  for  with  certain  tribes 
it  is  essential  to  the  future  well-being  of  the  departed 
that  they  be  brought  back  to  the  tribal  burying  ground 
near  the  village. 

The  highest  type  of  Indian  canoe  is  that  of  birch 
bark,  employed  by  the  tribes  of  the.  north  an^north- 
east,  yet  in  many  respects  the  canoe  of  the  northwest 
coast  equals  or  excels  it.  The  latter  being  of  wood, 
and  of  one  piece,  is  much  more  substantial  than  thye 
birch ;  yet  even  it  must  be  cared  for,  since  a  rough 
knock  or  two  on  the  beach  may  split  it  from  end  to 
end,  and  if  it  should  receive  injury,  the  work  of  repair 
ing  is  much  more  difficult  than  that  of  patching  a 
bark  canoe.  The  vessels  used  on  the  northwestern 
coast  vary  in  length  from  ten  to  eighty  feet,  and  are 
hollowed  out  from  the  trunk  of  a  single  tree  of  the 
white  cedar.  After  the  tree  trunk  has  been  flattened 
above  and  roughly  shaped,  the  work  of  hollowing  it 
out  begins.  Fires  are  built  on  the  top  of  the  log,  care 
fully  watched,  and  so  controlled  that  they  burn  evenly 
and  slowly  down  into  the  wood.  When  they  have 
gone  far  enough,  they  are  extinguished,  the  interior  is 
ecraped,  and  then  the  canoe-builder,  using  a  wooden 


)58  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

handle  in  which  is  fastened  a  small  chisel,  carefully 
goes  over  the  whole  surface.  At  each  blow  he  takes 
off  a  little  scale  of  wood,  as  large  as  a  man's  thumb  and 
quite  thin,  and  this  he  continues,  within  and  without, 
until  the  canoe  is  completed.  It  is  then  braced  by 
two  or  more  crosspieces,  which  are  sewed  to  the  gun 
wales  with  steamed  cedar  twigs  on  either  side,  so  that 
the  vessel  cannot  spread.  The  painting  follows,  and 
the  vessel  is  ready  for  use.  Only  seasoned  and  perfect 
timber  is  used  for  these  canoes. 

In  such  canoes,  the  Indians  of  the  north  Pacific 
make  long  journeys  over  the  open  seas,  often  ventur 
ing  out  of  sight  of  land,  facing  rough  weather,  and 
capturing  sea  otters,  seals,  sea  lions,  and  whales.  The 
larger  canoes  were  used  to  carry  war  parties,  and  the 
sudden  appearance  of  one  of  these  great  boats  full  of 
fighting  men  carried  consternation  to  the  hearts  of 
the  dwellers  in  the  village  that  it  threatened.  Trav 
ellers  in  these  canoes,  when  they  meet  a  heavy  head 
wind,  are  often  obliged  to  lie  windbound  for  days  be 
fore  they  can  continue  their  journey. 

Besides  the  long  pointed  paddles  with  a  crossbar 
at  the  handle,  which  are  used  to  propel  the  canoes, 
each  of  the  larger  ones  is  provided  with  a  mast  stepped 
in  a  chock  in  the  bottom,  and  supported  by  one  of  the 
forward  crossbars.  A  spritsail  is  used  with  a  following 
wind,  but  as  the  canoes  have  no  keel,  it  is  impossible 
to  beat,  and  even  with  a  beam  wind  the  vessel  slips 
rapidly  off  to  leeward. 

Dugouts  widely  different  from  those  of  the  north 
west  coast,  and  canoes  made  of  pine  or  spruce  bark, 
are  used  by  some  of  the  canoe  people  of  the  northern 
liocky  Mountains,  the  Kutenais,  Kalispels,  and  others. 
Those  of  bark  are  quite  remarkable  in  type,  being 


IMPLEMENTS  AND  INDUSTRIES.  159 

much  longer  on  the  bottom  than  the  top,  and  termi 
nating  before  and  behind  in  a  long  slender  point, 
which  looks  somewhat  like  the  ram  of  a  man-of-war. 
The  bark  is  stripped  off  the  tree  trunk  in  a  single 
piece,  the  outer  surface  being  shaved  or  scraped 
smooth.  It  is  then  bent  inside  out,  so  that  the  in 
side  of  the  canoe  is  formed  of  the  outside  of  the  bark. 
The  ends  are  then  brought  together  and  sewed  up 
with  long  fibres  of  roots,  the  awl  or  needle  used  being 
of  bone.  The  seams  are  pitched  with  gum  from  the 
spruce.  The  gunwale  on  either  side  is  strengthened 
by  strips  of  hard  wood,  sewn  to  the  bark  by  roots  or 
cedar  bark,  and  these  strips  meet  and  are  fastened  to 
gether  at  either  end  of  the  boat,  and  along  the  cut 
edge  of  the  bark  on  either  side  of  the  two  ends,  a  strip 
of  hard  wood  is  sewn  and  the  two  strips  lashed  togeth 
er.  The  boat  is  strengthened  by  ribs  of  ha%d  wood, 
which  run  across  from  one  gunwale  to  the  other,  fol 
lowing  the  skin  of  the  canoe,  and  a  number  of  longi 
tudinal  strips  form  a  flooring  and  strengthen  the  sides. 
Thus  the  vessel,  like  the  birch  canoe,  has  a  real  frame, 
though  this  is  built  inside  the  skin,  reversing  the  usual 
order.  Crossbars  or  thwarts  run  from  gunwale  to  gun 
wale,  and  give  additional  stiffness.  Sometimes  the 
bark  immediately  below  the  gunwales  is  from  the  birch 
tree.  The  paddle  has  a  straight,  simple  handle,  with 
out  crosspiece.  These  canoes  are  thus  quite  elaborate, 
but  they  are  extremely  difficult  to  handle  by  one  who 
is  not  accustomed  to  them,  and  turn  over  on  very  small 
provocation. 

The  birch  bark  canoe  of  the  northern  Indians  is 
identical  with  that  used  in  the  east,  and  its  form  and 
material  are  familiar  to  all.  It  is  a  graceful,  seaworthy 
structure,  very  light  and  easily  transported  from  place 


160  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

to  place,  and  very  readily  repaired.  It  is  in  general 
use  throughout  the  north. 

On  the  plains,  canoes  are  unknown,  for  there  are 
no  water  ways  which  make  them  necessary,  and  though 
many  tribes  which  had  migrated  from  the  east  had  in 
their  earlier  homes  made  and  used  these  vehicles,  yet 
when  the  conditions  of  their  life  made  them  unneces 
sary,  the  art  of  building  them  was  soon  forgotten.  On 
some  of  the  larger  streams,  however,  boats  were  needed 
to  ferry  across  the  chattels  of  the  people  when  travel 
ling,  and  this  want  was  supplied  by  the  invention  of 
the  "  bull  boat."  This  was  something  like  the  skin 
coracle  of  the  ancient  Britons,  but  was  even  more 
primitive.  It  was  a  circular  vessel,  shaped  like  a  shal 
low  teacup,  made  of  a  fresh  buffalo  hide  stretched  over 
a  frame  of  green  willow  branches.  All  the  holes  in 
the  skin  were  sewed  up,  and  all  the  seams  pitched  with 
tallow.  The  vessel  was  carefully  loaded  with  goods 
for  transportation,  a  place  being  left  at  one  point  for 
the  paddler.  Owing  to  the  shape  of  the  boat,  it  could 
not  be  rowed  or  paddled  in  the  ordinary  way.  The 
woman  dipped  her  paddle  in  the  water  and  drew  it 
directly  toward  her,  and  toward  the  side  of  the  boat, 
and  in  this  way  pulled  the  boat  to  the  opposite  shore. 
Men  did  not  often  use  these  boats,  but  usually  swam 
over  with  the  horses.  Such  boats  were  not  perma 
nent,  for  as  soon  as  they  had  served  their  purpose, 
the  frames  were  torn  out  of  them  and  the  hides  were 
used  for  some  other  purpose.  Bull  boats  were  used 
chiefly  on  the  lower  Missouri  and  Platte  rivers.  On 
the  upper  Missouri,  rafts  were  the  only  means  of  ferry 
ing  across  the  streams. 

The  Indian's  ideas  of  art  are  rude.  He  has  an  eye 
for  bright  colors,  but  no  notion  of  drawing.  His  fig- 


IMPLEMENTS  AND   INDUSTRIES.  161 

ures  of  men  and  animals  are  grotesque,  and  are  as 
grotesquely  painted  in  staring  hues  of  red,  yellow,  and 
black,  his  paints  being  burned  clays  and  charcoal.  In 
his  pottery  and  his  carving,  however,  he  is  more  ad 
vanced.  Some  of  his  water  jars  and  other  vessels 
have  very  graceful  shapes,  and  some  pots,  representing 
human  heads,  which  have  been  exhumed  from  the  an 
cient  mounds,  are  full  of  character. 

It  is  in  the  art  of  carving,  however,  that  the  great 
est  skill  was  shown.  Using  the  soft  catlinite  of  the 
pipe-stone  quarry,  the  plains  warrior  whittled  out  his 
great  red  pipe  as  symmetrically  as  if  turned  in  a  lathe, 
often  ornamenting  it  with  the  head  and  neck  of  a 
horse  or  a  bear.  The  canoe  man  of  Puget  Sound 
carved  the  soft  cedar  of  the  canoe  prow  into  a  figure 
head.  The  Navajoes  of  the  south  and  the  Haidahs  of 
the  north  are  skilled  silversmiths  to-day,  and  the 
dwellers  on  the  British  Columbia  and  Alaskan  coasts 
still  fashion  the  great  totem  poles,  which  tell  the  story 
of  their  descent  from  some  mythical  ancestor.  Very 
remarkable  skill  is  shown  by  the  Queen  Charlotte's 
Sound  Indians  in  their  work  in  a  black  slate  rock 
which  they  carve  into  all  sorts  of  shapes.  I  have 
seen  platters  and  dishes,  pipes,  and  models  of  houses, 
beautifully  carved  and  often  inlaid  with  carved  bits 
of  ivory  taken  from  the  teeth  of  the  walrus  or  the 
whale. 

Great  time  and  patience  must  be  expended  on  this 
work,  and  on  the  drilling  of  straight  holes  through 
the  stems  of  their  pipes,  some  of  them  four  feet  in 
length.  While  the  bowls  of  these  pipes  are  most  often 
of  the  stone  known  as  catlinite,  sometimes  they  are 
of  wood  or  bone,  or  even  petrified  wood  or  quartz 
pebble. 


162  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

The  musical  instruments  of  the  Indians  are  few. 
Drums,  whistles,  rattles,  an  instrument  called  by  the 
whites  a  "  fiddle  " — consisting  of  a  gourd  and  notched 
stick  along  which  another  stick  is  drawn — and  a 
flageolet  with  three  or  four  stops  were  the  principal 
ones.  The  flageolet  used  by  some  tribes  is  an  instru 
ment  of  considerable  range  and  power,  and  the  music 
made  on  it,  heard  at  night  in  the  camp  when  some 
young  man  is  serenading  his  sweetheart,  is  very 
charming.  The  whistles  are  used  chiefly  in  war,  the 
drums  in  festal  or  religious  ceremonies,  the  rattles  to 
beat  time  at  the  dance  or  to  frighten  away  bad  spirits. 
This  rattle  is  one  of  the  important  possessions  of  the 
healer,  and  is  often  so  highly  valued  that  the  owner 
refuses  to  sell  it. 

The  music  of  these  people  is  chiefly  vocal.  They 
are  unwearied  singers,  and  love,  war,  religion,  sorrow, 
or  joy  are  alike  expressed  IL  their  songs. 


CHAPTER  X. 

MAN   AND    NATUKE. 

LIKE  the  wild  bird  and  the  beast,  like  the  cloud 
and  the  forest  tree,  the  primitive  savage  is  a  part  of 
nature.  He  is  in  it  and  of  it.  He  studies  it  all 
through  his  life.  He  can  read  its  language.  It  is 
the  one  thing  that  he  knows.  He  is  an  observer. 
Nothing  escapes  his  eye.  The  sighs  of  clouds,  the 
blowing  of  the  winds,  the  movements  of  birds  and 
animals — all  tell  to  him  some  story.  It  is  by  observing 
these  signs,  reading  them,  and  acting  on  them  that  he 
procures  his  food,  that  he  saves  himself  from  his  ene 
mies,  that  he  lives  his  life. 

But  though  a  keen  observer,  the  Indian  is  not  a 
reasoner.  He  is  quick  to  notice  the  connection  be 
tween  two  events,  but  often  he  does  not  know  what 
that  connection  is.  He  constantly  mistakes  effect  for 
cause,  post  hoc  for  propter  hoc.  If  the  wind  blows 
and  the  waves  begin  to  roll  on  the  surface  of  the  lake, 
he  says  that  the  rolling  of  the  waves  causes  the  blow 
ing  of  the  breeze.  The  natural  phenomena  which 
we  understand  so  little,  he  does  not  understand  at  all. 
In  his  attempts  to  assign  causes  for  them,  he  gives 
explanations  which  are  grotesque.  The  moon  wanes 
because  it  is  sick,  and  at  last  it  dies  and  a  new  one 
is  created ;  or  it  grows  small  because  mice  are  gnaw 
ing  at  its  edges,  nibbling  it  away.  He  hears  a  grouse 
12  163  , 


164  THE  STORY  OP  THE  INDIAN. 

rise  from  the  ground  with  a  roar  of  wings,  and  con 
cludes  that  the  roar  of  the  thunder  must  be  made  by 
a  bird  much  larger ;  or  he  sees  an  unknown  bird  rise 
from  the  ground,  and  just  as  it  flies  the  thunder  rolls, 
hence  this  bird  causes  the  thunder  and  is  the  thunder 
bird. 

To  him  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  are  persons. 
The  animals,  trees,  and  mountains  are  powers  and  in 
telligences.  The  ravens  foretell  events  to  come,  the 
wolves  talk  to  him  of  matters  which  are  happening  at 
a  distance.  If  he  is  unhappy  and  prays  fervently  for 
hel^>,  some  animal  may  take  pity  on  him  and  assist 
him  by  its  miraculous  power.  He  understands  his 
own  weakness  and  realizes  the  strength  of  the  forces 
of  nature.  He  realizes,  too,  their  incomprehensibility. 
To  him  they  are  mysteries. 

The  Indian's  life  is  full  of  things  that  he  does  not 
understand — of  the  mysterious,  of  the  superhuman. 
These  mysteries  he  greatly  fears,  and  he  prays  without 
ceasing  that  he  may  be  delivered  from  the  unknown 
perils  which  threaten  him  on  every  hand.  He  has  a 
wholesome  dread  of  material  dangers,  of  enemies  on 
the  warpath,  of  bears  in  the  mountains ;  but  far  more 
than  these  he  fears  the  mysterious  powers  that  sur 
round  him — powers  which  are  unseen  until  they  strike, 
which  leave  no  tracks  upon  the  ground,  the  smoke  of 
whose  fires  cannot  be  seen  rising  through  the  clear  air. 
He  fears  the  burning  arrow  shot  by  the  thunder ;  the 
unseen  under-water  animals  which  may  seize  him,  as 
he  is  crossing  stream  or  lake,  and  drag  him  beneath 
the  waves;  the  invisible  darts  of  evil  spirits  which 
cause  disease  not  to  be  cured  by  any  medicine  of  roots 
or  herbs ;  the  ghost,  terrible  not  for  what  it  may  do, 
"but  only  because  it  is  a  ghost.  Against  such  dangers 


MAN  AND  NATURE. 

he  feels  that  he  has  no  defence.  So  it  is  that  he 
prays  to  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the  mountains, 
the  ghosts,  the  above-people,  and  the  under-water 
people.  For  pity  and  for  protection  he  appeals  to 
everything  in  nature  that  his  imagination  indues  with 
a  power  greater  than  his  own. 

In  an  Indian  camp  it  is  not  the  average  man  that 
has  communication  with  the  other  and  unseen  world. 
All  pray,  it  is  true,  but  to  most  of  these  prayers  no 
answer  is  vouchsafed.  It  is  only  now  and  then  that 
visions  or  communications  from  the  supernatural 
world  come  to  men  and  women.  Those  who  are  thus 
especially  favoured  are  not,  so  far  as  we  can  tell  from 
their  histories,  particularly  deserving.  The  help  that 
they  receive  they  owe  not  so  much  to  any  good  works 
that  they  have  performed,  or  to  any  merit  of  their 
own,  as  to  the  kindness  of  heart  of  the  supernatural 
powers.  In  another  volume  *  I  have  given  some  ac 
count  of  the  practice  of  dreaming  for  power,  an  act 
of  penance  and  self-sacrifice  which,  when  carried  out, 
often  secured  the  pity  and  help  of  the  supernatural 
powers,  and  which  seems  to  have  been  well-nigh  uni 
versal  among  the  Indians. 

The  powers  influencing  the  Indian's  life  may  be 
either  malignant  or  beneficent,  but  by  far  the  greater 
number  seem  to  be  well  disposed  and  helpful.  Stories 
about  this  latter  class  are  much  more  numerous  than 
those  of  hurtful  powers,  and  it  seems  that  usually 
these  supernatual  beings  are  easily  moved  by  prayer 
and  accessible  to  pity.  On  the  other  hand,  a  man  who 
fails  to  show  respect  to  these  forces  is  likely  to  die. 
On  the  west  side  of  the  Eocky  Mountains,  there  is  a 

*  Blackfoot  Lodge  Tales,  p.  191. 


166  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

mountain  sheep  skull  grown  into  a  great  pine  tree 
trunk.  This  is  a  sacred  object,  reverenced  by  all. 
Once,  however,  a  Nez  Perce  laughed  at  his  compan 
ions  because  they  offered  presents  to  this  skull,  and 
to  show  that  he  did  not  believe  in  it  he  shot  at  it  with 
his  gun.  The  next  day  as  he  was  travelling  along  his 
rifle,  accidentally  discharged,  killed  him. 

The  depths  of  the  water  shelter  a  horde  of  mys~ 
terious  inhabitants.  Some  of  them  are  people,  but 
quite  different  from  those  who  live  on  the  prairie. 
Others  are  animals  similar  to  those  which  we  have  on 
land,  while  others  are  monsters.  The  under-water 
people  use  the  water  fowl — the  swans,  geese,  and 
pelicans — for  their  dogs ;  that  is,  for  their  beasts  of 
burden.  Small  water  birds  are  used  as  messengers  by 
the  supernatural  powers.  The  Dakotas  and  Chey- 
ennes  tell  us  that  the  under-water  monsters  have  long 
horns  and  are  covered  with  hair.  The  Cheyennes 
say  that  they  lay  eggs,  and  that  any  human  being 
who  eats  one  of  these  eggs,  shortly  becomes  himself 
one  of  these  water  monsters. 

With  some  prairie  tribes  there  seems  in  early  times 
to  have  been  a  tendency  to  explain  the  advent  of  any 
animal  new  to  them  by  concluding  that  it  was  an 
under-water  animal  that  had  taken  to  living  on  the 
land.  Thus,  by  some,  the  first  white  men  were 
thought  to  be  under-water  people,  just  as  by  others 
they  were  believed  to  be  spirits  or  mysteries.  The 
Piegans  tell  with  much  detail  how  the  first  horses 
came  up  out  of  a  lake.  The  story  which  was  first 
told  me  by  Almost-a-Dog,  and  since  by  other  old 
people,  is  this  : 

A  long  time  ago  a  Piegan  warrior's  dream  told 
him  about  a  lake  far  away,  where  there  were  some 


MAN  AND  NATURE. 

large  animals,  which  were  harmless  and  which  he 
could  catch,  tame,  and  use  to  pack  on,  like  dogs. 
And  because  they  were  very  large  and  could  carry  a 
heavy  load,  they  would  be  better  to  use  than  the  dogs, 
on  which  the  people  then  carried  their  packs.  "  Go 
to  this  lake,"  said  his  dream,  "  and  take  with  you  a 
rope,  so  that  you  can  catch  these  animals." 

So  the  man  took  a  long  rope  of  bull's  hide,  and 
went  to  the  shore  of  the  lake,  and  dug  a  hole  in  the 
sand  there,  and  hid  in  it.  While  he  watched,  he  saw 
many  animals  come  down  to  the  lake  to  drink.  Deer 
came  down  and  coyotes  and  elk  and  buffalo.  They 
all  came  and  drank.  After  a  while,  the  wind  began  to 
blow  and  the  waves  to  rise  and  roll  upon  the  beach, 
saying  sh-li-li-h,  sh-h-h-h.  At  last  came  a  band  of 
large  animals,  unlike  any  that  the  man  had  ever  seen 
before.  They  were  big  like  an  elk,  and  had  small 
ears  and  long  tails  hanging  down.  Some  were  white, 
and  some  black,  and  some  red  and  spotted.  The 
young  ones  were  smaller.  When  they  came  down  to 
the  water's  edge  and  stopped  to  drink,  his  dream  said 
to  the  man,  "  Throw  your  rope  and  catch  one."  So 
the  man  threw  his  rope,  and  caught  one  of  the  largest 
of  the  animals.  It  struggled  and  pulled  and  dragged 
the  man  about,  and  he  was  not  strong  enough  to  hold 
it,  and  at  length  it  pulled  the  rope  out  of  his  hand, 
and  the  whole  band  ran  into  the  lake  and  under  the 
water  and  were  not  seen  again.  The  man  went  back 
to  camp  feeling  very  sad. 

He  prayed  for  help  to  his  dream,  which  said : 
"  Four  times  you  may  try  to  catch  these  animals.  If 
in  four  times  trying  you  do  not  get  them,  you  will 
never  see  them  again."  Then  the  man  made  a  sacrifice, 
and  prayed  to  the  Sun  and  to  Old  Man,  and  his  dreain 


168  ^HE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

spoke  to  him  in  his  sleep,  and  told  him  that  he  was 
not  strong  enough  to  catch  a  big  one,  that  he  ought 
try  to  catch  one  of  the  young — then  he  could  hold  it. 
The  man  went  again  to  the  shores  of  the  big  lake, 
and  again  dug  a  hole  in  the  sand  and  lay  hidden 
there.  He  saw  all  the  animals  come  down  to  drink — 
the  deer,  the  wolves,  the  elk,  and  the  buffalo.  At 
last  the  wind  began  to  rise  and  the  waves  to  roll  and 
to  say  sh-li-li-li,  sh-h-h-h  upon  the  shore.  Then  came 
the  band  of  strange  animals  to  drink  at  the  lake. 
Again  the  man  threw  his  rope,  and  this  time  he 
caught  one  of  the  young  and  was  able  to  hold  it.  He 
caught  all  of  the  young  ones  out  of  the  band  and  took 
them  to  the  camp.  After  they  had  been  there  a  little 
while,  the  mares — the  mothers  of  these  colts — came 
trotting  into  the  camp ;  their  udders  were  full  of 
milk.  After  them  came  all  the  others  of  the  band. 

At  first  the  people  were  afraid  of  these  new  ani 
mals  and  would  not  go  near  them,  but  the  man  who 
had  caught  them  told  everybody  that  they  were  harm 
less.  After  a  time  they  became  tame,  so  that  they 
did  not  have  to  be  tied  up,  but  followed  the  camp 
about  as  it  moved  from  place  to  place.  Then  the 
people  began  to  put  packs  on  them,  and  they  called 
them  po-no-Jcah'mi-ta,)  that  is,  elk-dog,  because  they 
are  big  and  shaped  like  an  elk,  and  carry  a  pack  like 
a  dog.  This  is  how  the  Piku'ni  got  their  horses. 

If  the  under- world  is  peopled  with  mysterious  and 
terrible  inhabitants,  not  less  strange  and  powerful  are 
those  who  dwell  in  the  regions  of  the  upper  air. 
There  lives  the  thunder,  that  fearful  one,  who  strikes 
without  warning,  whose  bolt  shatters  the  lofty  crag, 
blasts  the  tallest  pine,  and  fells  the  strongest  animal, 
a  moment  before  active  and  full  of  life.  There  are 


MAN  AND  NATURE.  169 

the  winds,  the  clouds,  the  ghosts,  and  many  other 
persons,  whom  sometimes  we  feel,  but  never  see. 

As  has  been  said,  the  thunder  is  usually  regarded 
as  a  great  bird,  but  this  appears  to  have  relation 
merely  to  the  sound  that  it  produces.  Often  the 
thunder  is  described  as  a  person,  sometimes  as  a 
dreadful  man  with  threatening  eyes,  or  again,  young 
and  handsome.  Sometimes  it  is  a  monster,  birdlike 
only  in  that  it  has  wings  and  the  power  of  flight. 
Thunder  is  terrible  and  must  be  prayed  to,  and  be 
sides  this,  he  brings  the  rain  which  makes  the  crops  to 
grow  and  the  berries  large  and  sweet,  and  for  this 
reason,  too,  he  must  be  prayed  to.  The  rainstorm 
and  the  thunder  are  scarcely  separated  in  the  Indian's 
mind.  Sometimes,  when  the  thunder  appears  most 
dangerous,  it  can  be  frightened  away.  A  friend  of 
mine  was  once  on  the  prairie  in  a  very  severe  storm. 
The  hair  of  his  head  and  the  mane  of  his  horse  stood 
straight  out.  The  thunder  was  crashing  all  about 
him  and  kept  drawing  nearer  and  nearer.  The  man 
was  very  much  frightened  and  did  not  know  what  to 
do,  but  at  length  in  despair  he  began  to  shoot  his  gun 
at  the  thunder,  loading  as  fast  as  he  could,  and  firing 
in  the  direction  of  the  sound.  Soon  after  he  began 
to  do  this,  the  thunder  commenced  to  move  away  and 
at  last  ceased  altogether. 

Some  tribes  believe  that  a  bitter  hostility  exists 
between  the  thunder  birds  and  the  under- water  mon 
sters,  the  birds  attacking  these  last  when  they  see 
them,  and  striving  to  carry  them  off. 

The  Rev.  J.  0.  Dorsey  tells  of  a  Winnebago  In 
dian,  who  was  said  to  have  been  an  eye  witness  of  such 
a  conflict,  and  who  was  called  on  by  each  of  the  com 
batants  for  assistance  in  the  fight,  each  promising  to 


170  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

reward  him  for  his  aid.  The  man  was  naturally  very 
much  afraid,  and  was  doubtful  what  part  he  should 
take  in  the  combat,  but  at  length  he  determined  to 
assist  the  thunder  bird  and  shot  an  arrow  into  the 
water  monster.  This  terminated  the  fight  in  favour 
.  of  the  aerial  power,  which  then  flew  away  with  its  foe. 
But  the  wounded  under-water  monster  called  back  to 
the  man,  "  Yes,  it  is  true  that  you  may  become  great, 
but  your  relations  must  die."  And  it  was  so.  The 
man  did  become  great,  but  his  relations  died.  Some 
times,  however,  arrows  shot  by  man  will  not  injure 
an  under-water  animal.  It  pays  no  attention  to  the 
arrows. 

One  view  taken  of  the  thunder  is  given  in  a  story 
told  in  the  Blackf oot  Lodge  Tales ;  another  is  found 
in  the  story  of  the  Thunder  Pipe,  a  Blood  story : 

This  happened  long  ago.  In  the  camp  the  chil 
dren  playing,  had  little  lodges  and  sticks  for  lodge 
poles,  and  used  to  make  travois  for  their  dogs.  A 
number  of  them  would  get  together  and  harness  their 
dogs  and  move  camp  about  a  mile,  carrying  their  little 
brothers  and  sisters,  and  then  put  up  their  lodges. 
Such  was  the  children's  play. 

One  day,  while  they  were  out  doing  this,  a  big 
cloud  came  up.  The  children  said,  "  We  had  better 
go  home.  It  looks  as  if  it  were  going  to  rain."  They 
waited  too  long,  and  before  they  had  started,  the  storm 
began.  Some  went  on  home  in  the  rain,  and  some 
went  into  the  brush,  to  wait  there  till  the  storm  had 
passed.  It  was  thundering  and  lightening — a  very 
hard  storm.  It  grew  worse  and  worse,  and  the  thun 
der  came  closer,  and  those  who  had  stayed  became 
frightened,  and  at  length  ran  home  in  the  rain. 

After  the  children  had  all  reached  the  camp,  one 


MAN  AND  NATURE.  171 

was  still  missing — a  girl  about  fifteen  years  old,  very 
pretty.  When  the  storm  had  passed,  some  of  the 
people  went  out  to  look  for  this  child,  but  they  could 
not  find  her.  This  alarmed  the  camp,  and  everybody 
turned  out  to  try  to  find  the  little  girl.  They  looked 
for  her  for  three  days,  but  could  not  find  her.  The 
mother  was  very  sorry  to  have  lost  her  child,  and 
gashed  her  legs  and  arms  and  cut  on0  the  ends  of  her 
fingers,  and  the  father  did  the  same.  They  sat  up  on 
the  hills  mourning,  and  would  not  eat,  nor  drink,  nor 
come  to  camp,  they  were  so  sorry  for  the  loss  of  the 
girl.  At  last  the  camp  moved  and  went  to  another 
stream. 

Soon  after  they  got  there,  another  terrible  storm 
came  up.  The  clouds  were  black,  the  rain  poured 
down,  and  the  thunder  crashed  everywhere  about  the 
camp.  During  the  storm,  while  it  was  raining  heavi 
est,  a  young  man  came  running  into  the  lodge  of  the 
mourners  and  said  to  them,  "Your  girl  has  come 
back."  The  girl  was  brought  into  the  lodge,  and  her 
father  and  mother  were  very  happy  to  see  her.  Be 
fore  they  had  time  to  speak,  she  said  to  them,  "  Father 
and  mother,  I  have  been  away,  but  it  was  not  my 
fault."  They  asked  her,  "  Where  have  you  been  ? " 
She  replied :  "  I  cannot  tell  you  that.  I  do  not  know 
where  I  have  been.  While  it  was  raining  and  thun 
dering  the  other  day  a  young  man  came  and  stood 
beside  me  and  said,  '  Let  us  go.'  I  did  not  want  to 
go,  but  he  took  me.  I  have  been  crying  all  the  time 
ever  since,  and  at  last  he  took  pity  on  me  and  brought 
me  back.  If  you  will  go  to  my  grandmother's  lodge 
you  will  see  him.  He  is  in  there.  You  will  also  find 
a  pipestem,  which  your  son-in-law  has  given  me. 
Bring  it  to  this  lodge." 


172  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

The  parents  went  over  to  the  lodge  to  get  the  pipe- 
stem,  and  were  much  surprised  to  see  what  a  hand 
some  young  man  was  there.  They  did  not  know  him. 
He  was  a  stranger  to  them.  He  was  so  handsome 
they  were  frightened. 

The  old  people  took  the  stem  and  brought  it  to 
their  lodge,  and  said  to  their  daughter :  "  Well,  it  is 
good  that  you  are  married.  Your  husband  is  a  very 
fine-looking  man.  Who  is  he  ?  "  She  answered,  "  I 
cannot  tell  you,  for  I  do  not  know."  "  When  did  you 
first  see  him  ?  Where  did  he  find  you  ?  "  they  said. 
The  girl  replied :  "  I  was  bending  down  ovej  a  tree 
trunk  when  the  thunder  fell  right  in  front  of  me. 
When  I  raised  myself  up  quickly  and  looked,  this 
young  man  was  standing  by  me.  I  did  not  wish  to 
go  with  him,  but  he  took  me.  We  had  only  walked 
a  little  way  when  I  found  I  was  in  a  strange  land,  and 
I  have  been  crying  ever  since.  At  last  he  said  to 
me,  '  Well,  if  you  are  so  lonesome,  I  will  have  to 
take  you  back  to  your  people.'  It  was  a  fine,  bright 
day  when  we  started  this  morning,  but  we  had  gone 
only  a  little  way  when  we  were  walking  in  a  small 
mist.  As  we  came  further  this  mist  grew  larger  and 
rose  and  clouded  over  the  whole  sky,  and  we  walked 
on  in  it.  After  a  while,  I  found  the  rain  pouring 
down,  and  the  next  thing  I  knew  I  was  standing  here 
in  your  camp." 

The  parents  talked  to  the  young  man,  but  he  would 
not  answer  them.  The  girl  told  the  people  that  while 
in  the  strange  land  the  young  man  gave  her  a  pipe- 
stem  to  give  to  her  father.  When  he  was  in  trouble 
and  wanted  help,  he  might  ask  for  it  from  this  pipe- 
stem.  Then  the  Thunder  power  would  aid  him. 
"  When  your  father  is  tired  of  it,"  he  said  "  he  may 


MAN  AND  NATURE.  173 

give  it  to  his  children,  and  they  may  use  it  with  the 
same  power.  So  long  as  this  stem  is  kept  by  your 
people  it  will  be  a  great  help  to  them." 

This  is  where  the  stem  came  from  that  belongs 
to  Mahkwe'yi  pis'to-ki.  It  has  been  kept  in  this 
tribe,  handed  down  from  those  days,  and  is  still  in 
the  Blood  carnp. 

The  winter  storms  of  snow  and  cold  are  ruled  by 
a  person  sometimes  called  Coldmaker.  He  is  white, 
not  as  the  white  man  is  white,  but  rather  like  the 
snow,  and  is  clad  in  white,  and  rides  a  white  horse. 
He  brings  the  storm,  riding  in  the  midst  of  it,  and 
some  people  have  the  power  to  call  him  and  to  bring 
on  a  snowstorm. 

The  wind  does  not  often  take  material  shape  and 
is  seldom  seen,  yet  in  some  cases  it  speaks  to  people. 
Also  it  is  sometimes  made  a  messenger  by  the  ruler. 
Various  causes  are  assigned  for  the  blowing  of  the 
wind,  and  one  of  these — told  me  years  ago  by  an  old 
Blood  Indian,  who  knew  the  men  to  whom  this  hap 
pened — is  perhaps  worth  repeating  : 

A  good  many  years  ago  the  camp  was  moving 
from  the  north  down  through  this  country  (that  along 
Milk  River  and  the  head  waters  of  the  Marias). 
When  they  had  got  down  here  they  ran  out  of  Vherbe 
and  moved  up  toward  the  mountains  to  gather  some, 
and  there  they  saw  Windmaker. 

There  were  three  young  men  who  went  out  to 
gather  Vherbe.  They  went  up  on  the  foothills,  and 
as  they  were  going  along  they  saw,  down  below  them 
in  a  valley,  a  strange  animal.  It  was  small — the  size 
of  a  white  man's  cow,  blue-roan  in  colour,  and  had  a 
very  long  tail.  They  stood  looking  down  at  it,  and 


174:  THE  STORY   OF  THE   INDIAN. 

said  to  each  other,  "  What  kind  of  an  animal  is 
that  ?  "  None  of  them  had  ever  seen  anything  like  it. 

At  length,  while  it  was  walking  about  grazing,  it 
raised  its  head  and  looked  toward  them,  and  they  saw 
that  it  had  very  long  ears.  When  it  looked  toward 
them,  it  moved  its  ears  backward  and  forward  two  or 
three  times,  and  at  once  there  came  two  or  three 
terrible  gusts  of  wind.  It  turned,  and  started  to  trot 
off  toward  the  mountains,  and  they  followed  it.  It 
threw  its  ears  backward  and  forward,  and  gusts  of 
wind  kept  coming.  They  chased  it,  and  it  ran  into  a 
piece  of  timber,  in  which  there  was  a  lake.  Here  the 
men  separated,  one  going  around  the  timber  on  either 
side  of  the  lake,  while  the  third  followed  the  animal. 

When  the  two  men  had  gone  around  the  timber 
and  came  to  the  further  edge  of  the  lake,  the  wind 
died  down  very  suddenly.  They  stood  there,  waiting 
and  looking  for  the  animal.  The  man  who  had  fol 
lowed  it  saw  the  tracks  going  into  the  lake,  and  signed 
to  the  others  to  come  to  him.  They,  too,  saw  where 
it  had  gone  into  the  water,  but  although  they  went 
all  around  the  lake,  they  could  not  see  any  tracks 
where  it  had  come  out.  They  waited  about  till  dark, 
but  it  did  not  come  out  of  the  lake,  so  they  went  back 
to  their  camp  and  told  the  medicine  man  what  they 
had  seen. 

Before  that  the  people  had  never  known  what  it 
was  that  made  the  wind  blow,  but  now,  when  they  had 
seen  this  animal,  the  medicine  man  decided  that  it 
caused  the  wind,  and  they  called  it  Windmaker. 

The  beliefs  in  animals  are  as  numerous  as  the 
tribes — almost  as  the  individuals  of  the  tribes.  Many 
of  them  have  already  been  alluded  to,  or  will  be 


MAN  AND   NATURE.  175 

spoken  of  in  the  chapter  on  religion.  The  Dakotas 
believe  that  the  bear  and  the  wolf  exert  evil  influ 
ences,  and  cause  disease  and  death,  while  the  Pawnees 
regard  them  as  friendly  and  helpful.  Besides  the 
reverence  felt  for  the  buffalo,  there  are  believed  to 
exist  certain  mysterious  buffalo  which  cannot  be 
killed  and  which  have  great  power. 

The  Pawnee  Indians  have  a  special  belief  about 
a  little  animal  which  they  call  ground  dog,  and  which, 
from  their  description,  I  believe  to  be  the  black- 
footed  ferret  (Putorius  nigripes).  This  animal,  being 
nocturnal  in  habit  and,  spending  most  of  its  time  in 
burrows  under  ground,  is  seldom  seen.  The  Pawnees 
believe  that  if  this  animal  sits  up  and  looks  at  a  man, 
working  its  jaws,  as  if  chewing,  the  entrails  of  that 
man  will  at  once  be  cut  to  pieces  and  he  will  die. 

A  considerable  proportion  of  the  "  medicine  "  per 
formances  in  any  camp  have  to  do  with  healing. 
While  the  Indians  are  skilful  in  curing  simple  ail 
ments  and  in  surgery  of  a  certain  kind,  there  are 
many  more  serious  diseases  which  they  do  not  at  all 
comprehend,  and  for  which  they  have  no  medical 
treatment.  Such  diseases  they  believe  to  be  caused 
by  evil  spirits,  which  must  be  driven  away  by  the 
dream  power  of  the  doctor,  who  relies  for  help  on  this 
power  and  not  on  any  curative  agents.  The  treat 
ment  consists  of  burning  sweet-smelling  vegetation  to 
purify  the  air,  of  singing  and  praying  to  invoke  the 
help  of  the  power,  of  rattling  and  making  alarming 
sounds  to  frighten  away  the  evil  spirits,  and  of  suck 
ing  and  brushing  off  the  skin  of  the  patient  to  re 
move  the  mechanical  causes  of  the  disease.  The  dif 
ferent  operations  of  this  healing  process  have  often 
been  described.  Usually  such  treatment  gives  no  re- 


176  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

lief  and  the  patient  dies,  but  in  wounds  or  other  in 
juries  these  doctors  have  a  success  which  oftentimes  is 
very  remarkable.  In  another  place  I  have  given  some 
examples  of  this  success,  and  I  add  here  two  other 
cases  where  men  have  cured  themselves  or  were  cured 
by  others  through  dream  power.  Some  of  these  stories 
come  from  eyewitnesses. 

A  small  party  of  Piegans  were  camped  at  Fort 
Brule,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Marias  River,  when,  one 
morning  about  daylight,  a  war  party  of  enemies 
rushed  upon  them.  The  gates  of  the  fort  were 
barred,  so  some  of  the  women  put  up  their  travois 
against  the  stockade  and  climbed  over  the  walls  for 
shelter,  while  some  dug  pits  in  the  ground  outside 
the  stockade.  A  very  heavy  fight  began.  Two 
women  and  one  man  were  killed  just  outside  the 
stockade  door  by  a  lance  in  the  hands  of  a  Cree. 

There  was  another  camp  of  Piegans  not  far  off, 
and  when  the  fight  began  one  of  the  Indians  ran 
from  Fort  Brule  and  told  these  others  that  the 
Crees  were  attacking  them.  A  party  of  warriors  hur 
ried  down,  and  when  they  reached  the  fort,  the  Crees 
began  to  retreat.  The  Piegans  followed  them,  and 
the  two  parties  took  their  stand  on  a  ridge,  the  Orees 
on  one  side  and  the  Piegans  on  the  other.  A  Piegan 
named  White  Bear  was  trying  to  get  closer  to  the 
enemy,  and  a  Cree  crept  up  close  to  him  and  shot 
him  through  the  body,  the  ball  entering  at  the  kid 
neys  and  coming  out  at  the  shoulders.  His  compan 
ions  dragged  the  man  to  the  camp.  He  was  still 
breathing  when  they  got  him  to  the  camp.  Soon 
after  he  died. 

There  was  an  old  woman  in  the  camp,  a  very  power 
ful  doctor,  and  when  she  saw  that  the  man  was  dead, 


MAN  AND  NATURE.  177 

she  took  her  buffalo  robe  and  painted  it  on  the  head 
and  on  the  back  and  down  the  sides.  She  covered  the 
boy  with  the  painted  robe,  and  then  asked  for  a  dish 
of  yellow  clay  and  some  water.  When  these  were 
brought  to  her,  she  untied  from  White  Bear's  neck  the 
skin  of  a  little  mole  that  he  used  to  carry  about,  and 
put  this  skin  in  the  dish  of  yellow  clay.  Then  she 
began  to  sing  her  medicine  song,  and  went  up  to  the 
dead  man  and  caught  him  by  the  little  finger  and  shook 
him,  and  said,  "  Wake  up."  At  this  time  the  lodge 
was  crowded  full,  and  many  stood  about  looking  under 
the  lodge  skins,  which  were  raised.  The  woman  would 
shake  the  robe  which  lay  on  the  man,  and  say,  "  Wake 
up ;  you  are  wanted  to  smoke."  After  she  had  done 
this  four  times,  the  fourth  time  she  did  it,  this  man 
moved.  -When  he  moved,  the  old  woman  asked  that 
the  pipe  be  lighted.  This  was  done  and  the  pipe 
handed  to  her,  and  after  taking  a  small  smoke  and 
making  a  prayer  to  the  ghosts,  she  said  to  the  young 
man,  "  Wake  up,"  and  at  the  same  time  pulled  the 
robe  off  him.  White  Bear  staggered  to  his  feet  and 
reached  out  his  hand  to  take  the  pipe,  but  the  old 
woman  kept  backing  away  from  him,  till  she  came  to 
where  stood  the  dish  of  yellow  chalk  with  the  skin  in 
it.  There  the  man  took  the  pipe  and  began  to  smoke, 
and  the  blood  poured  from  both  the  bullet  holes.  He 
sat  down  beside  the  dish  that  had  the  mole  in  it,  and 
finally  lay  down  and  smoked,  and  when  he  smoked  he 
blew  the  smoke  toward  the  mole  and  the  yellow  clay. 
When  he  had  finished  smoking  he  covered  the  mole 
skin  over  with  a  piece  of  buckskin,  and  then  after  a 
minute  or  two  took  the  skin  off,  and  the  mole  was  there 
alive,  scratching  and  digging  in  the  yellow  clay.  He 
lay  down  beside  it,  and  the  mole  left  the  dish,  ran  over 


178  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

on  to  his  body,  went  to  the  bullet  hole,  put  his  head 
in  it,  and  began  to  pull  out  clots  of  blood.  After  it 
had  done  this  at  one  hole,  it  ran  to  the  other  and  did 
the  same  thing,  and  when  it  had  done  that,  it  went 
back  to  the  dish  and  remained  there,  and  White  Bear 
again  covered  it  with  the  piece  of  buckskin.  Then 
he  took  it  off,  and  when  he  did  so,  there  was  nothing 
there  but  the  stuffed  skin.  After  he  had  sung  a  song, 
White  Bear  made  a  speech,  saying  that  he  had  been 
dead,  but  now  he  had  come  to  life,  and  that  after  four 
nights  he  would  be  well.  The  fourth  day  he  was  able 
to  go  about. 

A  few  days  after  he  was  able  to  get  about,  White 
Bear  started  out  as  leader  of  a  war  party  against  the 
Pend  d'Oreilles.  One  day,  as  they  were  marching 
along,  he  said  to  his  fellows,  "  I  am  going  ahead  to 
see  what  I  can  discover."  A  war  party  of  the  ene 
my  saw  him  coming,  and  lay  in  ambush  for  him 
in  a  ravine.  As  he  was  walking  along  with  folded 
arms,  they  fired  on  him,  and  a  ball  went  through  his 
wrist  and  through  his  body.  His  party  were  not  far 
behind,  and  when  they  heard  the  shooting,  they  rushed 
up  and  drove  off  the  enemy  and  saved  their  leader. 
When  the  fight  was  over  White  Bear  said  :  "  I  am 
badly  hurt.  We  will  have  to  go  back." 

They  started  back,  and  when  they  reached  the 
camp  White  Bear  was  nearly  dead.  They  thought 
he  was  going  to  die.  The  same  doctoring  was  gone 
through  with  that  had  been  performed  a  few  days 
before,  and  with  the  same  result.  W'hite  Bear  was 
cured. 

Here  is  another  example  : 

The  Big  Snake — a  Piegan — went  to  war.  They 
passed  along  through  the  Cut  Bank  country  to  go 


MAN  AND  NATURE.  179 

across  the  mountains,  and  took  the  Good  Hole  through 
the  Mountains  (Cadotte)  pass.  One  day,  as  they  were 
going  along,  they  met  a  war  party  of  Crows.  The 
Crows  saw  them  first,  and  lay  in  ambush  for  them. 
As  they  were  walking  along,  a  volley  was  fired  on  them, 
and  the  leader  was  shot  down  and  killed.  Another 
one  of  the  party  was  wounded,  but  the  Piegans  rushed 
on  the  Crows  and  drove  them  off. 

The  Piegans  started  back,  and  when  they  had 
reached  the  Muddy,  the  wounded  man  was  nearly 
dead.  This  man  had  with  him  the  stuffed  skin  of  a 
curlew. 

"When  he  found  that  he  could  go  no  further,  he 
stopped  and  asked  his  companions  to  sing  his  medi 
cine  song,  saying  that  he  would  try  whether  he  could 
do  anything  for  himself.  A  sack  of  red  paint  was  got 
out  and  untied,  and  he  put  the  curlew  skin  down  on 
the  paint.  The  pipe  was  filled  and  handed  to  him 
lighted,  and  when  he  smoked  he  blew  the  smoke  down 
onto  the  curlew  skin.  After  the  second  song  was  sung, 
the  curlew  got  up  and  shook  itself,  and  dusted  itself 
in  the  red  paint.  The  man  lay  down  on  a  robe  spread 
out  for  him,  and  the  curlew  left  the  paint  and  walked 
up  to  him.  It  put  its  bill  down  in  the  wound  and 
worked  it  about,  doing  this  several  times.  Then  the 
man  turned  over  on  his  back,  and  the  bird  did  the 
same  thing  to  the  other  wound,  every  now  and  then 
uttering  its  call.  After  it  had  done  this,  it  walked  over 
to  the  red  paint  and  sat  down  in  it,  and  they  covered  it 
over  with  a  skin.  When  they  took  the  skin  off,  the 
bird  was  gone,  and  there  was  only  the  bird's  skin 
there.  The  man  got  well  at  once.  White  Calf  saw 
this  himself. 

Other  stories  are  told  in  which  the  skin  of  a  weasel 
13 


180  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

and  a  skunk  became  alive  and  worked  similar  cures, 
and  the  list  might  be  indefinitely  prolonged. 

If  a  white  man  saw  such  things  as  these  happen  he 
could  not  explain  them,  and  would  be  likely  to  con 
sider  thorn  the  work  of  the  devil,  or  at  least  of  some 
supernatural  power.  The  Indians  cannot  explain 
them  either ;  and  believing  the  evidence  of  their  eyes, 
they  also  believe  that  these  things  are  done  by  the 
dream,  or  the  secret  helper,  of  the  person  who  exer 
cises  the  power. 

All  these  things  which  we  speak  of  as  medicine  the 
Indian  calls  mysterious,  and  when  he  calls  them  mys 
terious  this  only  means  that  they  are  beyond  his  power 
to  account  for,  that  they  are  inexplicable.  We  say 
that  the  Indian  calls  whisky  "  medicine  water."  He 
really  calls  it  mysterious  water — that  is,  water  which 
acts  in  a  way  that  he  can  not  understand,  making  him 
dizzy,  happy,  drunk.  In  the  same  way  some  tribes 
call  the  horse  "  medicine  dog,"  and  the  gun  "  medi 
cine  iron,"  meaning  mysterious  dog  and  mysterious 
iron.  He  whom  we  call  a  medicine  man  may  be  a 
doctor,  a  healer  of  diseases ;  or  if  he  is  a  juggler,  a 
worker  of  magic,  he  is  a  mystery  man.  All  Indian 
languages  have  words  which  are  the  equivalents  of  our 
word  medicine,  something  with  curative  properties; 
but  the  Indian's  translation  of  "  medicine,"  used  in 
the  sense  of  magical  or  supernatural,  would  be  myste 
rious,  inexplicable,  unaccountable. 

The  word  "  medicine,"  as  we  use  it  in  this  connec 
tion,  is  from  the  French  word  for  doctor.  The  early 
trappers  saw  the  possessors  of  this  supernatural  power 
use  it  in  healing,  and  called  the  man  who  employed  it 
a  medecin  or  doctor.  From  calling  the  doctor  medecin, 
it  was  an  easy  transition  to  call  his  power  by  the  same 


MAN  AND  NATURE.  isj 

name,  and  the  similarity  in  sound  of  the  English  and 
French  words  made  the  term  readily  adopted  by  Eng 
lish-speaking  people.  The  term  "  medicine  man  " 
originally  meant  doctor  or  healer,  but  one  who  effected 
his  cures  by  supernatural  power.  So  at  last  "  medi 
cine  "  came  to  mean  this  power,  and  "  medicine  man  " 
the  person  who  controlled  the  power,  and  the  notion 
of  curing  or  healing  became  in  a  measure  lost. 


CHAPTER  XL 

HIS   CREATION. 

CIVILIZED  man  has  devoted  much  time  to  specu 
lation  and  theory  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Indian  with 
out  as  yet  reaching  any  definite  conclusion.  The  red 
man  has  been  assigned  to  different  races,  and  has  been 
called  a  Hebrew,  a  Malay,  and  a  Chinaman.  Whence 
he  came  we  do  not  know,  but  it  is  certain  that  he  has 
inhabited  this  continent  for  a  very  long  time — long 
enough  to  have  established  here  a  well-differentiated 
race,  about  whose  purity  and  antiquity  there  is  no 
question.  The  curious  resemblances  to  other  races 
which  have  so  often  been  noticed  are  probably  en 
tirely  fortuitous. 

But  if  the  white  man  gropes  in  darkness  searching 
for  light  as  to  this  origin,  the  Indian  himself  has  no 
such  doubts.  Each  tribe  has  a  definite  story  of  its 
own  creation,  which  has  been  handed  down  by  oral 
tradition  from  father  to  son  for  many  generations.  A 
considerable  number  of  these  myths  have  been  record 
ed,  and  they  are  of  great  interest  as  shedding  some 
light  on  the  primitive  beliefs  of  a  wholly  primitive 
people.  Such  traditions  have  unquestionably  under 
gone  certain  changes  in  process  of  transmission,  but 
the  modifications  and  additions  are,  I  think,  less  con 
siderable  than  is  commonly  believed.  The  Indian  pre 
serves  in  a  remarkable  way  the  tales  handed  down  to 

_  182 


SIS  CREATION.  183 

him  from  his  ancestors.  To  him  such  traditions  have 
a  certain  sanctity,  and  he  does  not  consciously  change 
them.  They  are,  as  it  were,  chapters  from  his  sacred 
book,  and  in  repeating  them  he  tries  to  give  them  ex 
actly  as  they  have  been  told  to  him.  In  receiving 
these  and  other  traditions  from  the  Indians,  I  have 
often  been  interested  to  see  the  pains  taken  to  give 
each  tale  in  its  proper  form — to  tell  the  story  exactly 
as  it  should  be  told.  If  in  the  course  of  his  narration 
the  speaker's  memory  proves  at  fault  on  any  point,  he 
will  consult  authorities,  asking  the  opinions  of  old 
men  who  are  best  acquainted  with  the  story,  refresh 
ing  his  memory  by  their  assistance,  fully  discussing 
the  doubtful  point,  and  weighing  each  remark  and 
suggestion  with  care  before  continuing  his  tale. 

The  creation  stories  of  the  various  tribes  are  quite 
different,  though  in  those  which  are  akin  there  is  usu 
ally  more  or  less  similarity.  Often  the  stories  are  told 
with  much  detail.*  In  some  cases  the  very  spot  at 
which  their  ancestors  first  had  life  is  described,  but 
in  others  no  locality  is  assigned  to  the  event.  Such 
stories  usually  include,  besides  the  mere  act  of  cre 
ation,  the  early  history  of  the  tribes,  and  an  account 
of  how  his  primitive  weapons  and  some  instruction 
as  to  the  manner  of  using  them  were  given  to  early 
man. 

Sometimes  the  fact  of  creation  is  given  in  general 
terms  only,  or  again  the  material  used,  and  the  differ 
ent  acts  performed  in  shaping  man  and  giving  him 
life  are  described  with  some  minuteness.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  earliest  stories  that  we  have  of  some  tribes 
describe  them  as  already  existing,  but  in  some  far-away 

*  See  The  Blackfoot  Genesis.    Blackfoot  Lodge  Tales,  p.  137. 


184  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

place,  or  perhaps  under  the  ground,  or  beneath  the 
surface  of  a  lake. 

Such  tales,  bearing  as  they  usually  do  on  the  first 
acts  of  the  Creator,  who  is  the  principal  God,  have  an 
intimate  connection  with  the  religious  beliefs  of  the 
tribes,  and  are  a  part  of  their  religious  history.  In  an 
article  *  published  in  1893  I  gave  the  creation  myth 
of  the  Pawnees.  I  quote  the  substance  of  it  here  : 

Tirdwa  is  the  Creator.  He  made  the  mountains, 
the  prairies,  and  the  rivers. 

The  men  of  the  present  era  were  not  the  original 
inhabitants  of  the  earth.  They  were  preceded  by 
another  race  —  people  of  great  size  and  strength. 
These  were  so  swift  of  foot,  and  so  powerful,  that 
they  could  easily  run  down  and  kill  the  buffalo.  A 
great  bull  was  readily  carried  into  camp  on  the  back 
by  these  giants,  and  when  a  calf  or  a  yearling  was 
killed,  tho  man  thrust  its  head  under  his  belt  and  car 
ried  it  dangling  against  his  leg,  as  the  men  of  to-day 
carry  a  rabbit.  Often  when  these  people  overtook  a 
buffalo  they  would  strike  it  with  their  hands,  or  kick 
it  with  the  foot,  to  knock  it  down,  and  to-day,  the  Ari- 
karas  say,  you  can  see  the  marks  of  these  blows — the 
prints  of  the  hands  and  the  feet — on  the  flesh  of  the 
buffalo  beneath  the  skin,  where  these  people  kicked 
and  scratched  the  animals. 

The  race  of  giants  had  no  respect  for  the  Ruler. 
On  the  contrary,  they  derided  and  insulted  him  in 
every  way  possible.  When  the  sun  rose,  or  when  it 
thundered  and  rained,  they  would  defy  him.  They 
had  great  confidence  in  their  own  powers,  and  believed 
that  they  were  able  to  cope  with  the  Creator.  As  they 

*  Journal  of  American  Folk-Lore,  vol.  vi,  p.  113,  1893. 


HIS  CREATION.  185 

increased  in  numbers  they  grew  more  defiant,  and  at 
length  became  so  bad  that  Tirdwa  determined  to  de 
stroy  them.  This  he  attempted  to  do  at  first  by  shoot 
ing  the  lightning  at  them  ;  but  the  bolts  glanced  aside 
from  their  bodies  without  injuring  them.  When  he 
found  that  they  could  not  be  killed  by  that  means,  he 
sent  a  great  rain,  which  destroyed  them  by  drowning. 
The  ground  became  water-soaked  and  soft,  and  these 
large  and  heavy  people  sank  into  it  and  were  engulfed 
in  the  mire.  The  great  fossil  bones  of  mastodons,  ele 
phants,  and  Brontotheridce  are  said  to  be  the  bones  of 
these  giants ;  and  that  such  remains  are  often  found 
sticking  out  of  cut  banks,  or  in  deep  cafions,  buried 
under  many  feet  of  earth,  is  deemed  conclusive  evi 
dence  that  the  giants  did  sink  into  the  soft  earth  and 
so  perish. 

After  the  giant  race  had  passed  away,  Tirdwa  cre 
ated  a  new  people,  a  man  and  a  woman,  who  were  like 
those  now  on  the  earth.  These  people  were  at  first 
poor,  naked,  and  were  without  any  knowledge  of  how 
they  should  live ;  but  after  a  time  the  Creator  gave 
them  the  corn,  the  buffalo,  and  the  wild  roots  and 
fruits  of  the  prairie  for  food,  bows  and  arrows  to  kill 
their  game,  and  fire  sticks  to  furnish  a  means  of  cook 
ing  it.  The  Ruler  provided  for  them  these  various 
things,  such  as  trees  bearing  fruits,  and  things  that 
grow  in  the  ground,  artichokes,  wild  turnips,  and 
other  roots.  In  the  rivers  he  put  fish,  and  on  the 
land  game.  All  these  things,  everything  good  to  eat 
found  on  the  plains  or  in  the  timber,  was  given  to 
them  by  Tirdwa. 

All  these  gifts  were  presented  to  the  Pawnees  in 
the  country  in  which  they  were  originally  created,  and 
which,  as  clearly  appears  from  the  statements  of  the 


186  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

oldest  men,  was  far  to  the  southwest.  It  was  in  this 
original  country  that  the  Pawnees  received  their  sacred 
bundles.  When  they  were  given  them,  the  people 
knew  nothing  of  iron,  but  used  flint  knives  and  ar 
rowheads.  The  bundles  are  said  to  have  been  handed 
down  from  the  Father,  though  in  certain  cases,  special 
stories  are  told  how  particular  bundles  came  to  be  re 
ceived. 

A  more  detailed  account  of  the  creation  and  the 
doings  of  the  original  people  is  given  by  the  Arikaras, 
but  it  is  not  in  all  respects  like  that  told  by  the  Paw 
nees,  for  these  two  tribes,  though  belonging  to  the 
same  family,  separated  long  ago.  This  story,  which 
is  generally  known  in  the  Arikara  tribe,  has  come 
to  me  from  various  sources.  Two  Crows — the  chief 
priest  and  the  fountain  of  sacred  learning  for  the  tribe 
— Pahukatawa,  Fighting  Bear,  and  others  have  given 
me  portions  of  this  history;  but  the  most  complete 
account  I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  the  Rev.  C.  L.  Hall, 
who  had  it  from  a  Ree  known  as  Peter  Burdash,  arid 
he  received  it  direct  from  Ka-ka-pit'ka  (Two  Crows), 
the  priest.  The  account  is  as  follows  :  In  the  begin 
ning  Atiucli  (=  Pawnee  Atius]  created  the  earth  and 
a  people  of  stone.  These  people  were  so  strong  that 
they  had  no  need  of  the  Creator,  and  would  not  obey 
him.  They  even  defied  him ;  so  he  determined  to  put 
an  end  to  them.  He  therefore  caused  a  great  rain, 
which  fell  continuously  for  many  days,  until  the  land 
was  all  covered  with  water,  and  the  trees  were  dead  and 
the  tops  of  the  hills  were  submerged.  Many  of  these 
people  being  big  and  heavy,  and  so  able  to  move  only 
slowly,  could  not  reach  the  tops  of  the  hills,  to  which 
all  tried  to  escape  for  safety,  and  even  those  who  did 
so  were  drowned  by  the  rising  waters,  which  at  last 


HIS  CREATION.  187 

covered  the  whole  land.  Everything  on  the  earth  was 
dead.  To-day  in  the  washed  clay  bluffs  of  the  bad 
lands  the  horizontal  lines  of  stratification  are  shown 
as  marking  the  level  of  the  waters  at  various  times 
during  this  flood,  and  the  hard  sandstone  pinnacles 
which  cap  the  bluffs,  and  which  sometimes  present  a 
rude  semblance  of  the  human  form,  are  pointed  out 
as  the  remains  of  these  giants. 

Now  when  everything  was  dead,  there  were  left  a 
mosquito  flying  about  over  the  water  and  a  little  duck 
swimming  on  it.  These  two  met,  and  the  duck  said 
to  the  mosquito,  "  How  is  it  that  you  are  here  ?  "  The 
mosquito  said,  "  I  can  live  on  this  foam  ;  how  is  it 
with  you  ?  "  The  duck  answered,  "  When  I  am  hun 
gry,  I  can  dive  down  and  eat  the  green  weed  that  grows 
under  the  water."  Then  said  the  mosquito  :  "  I  am 
tired  of  this  foam.  If  you  will  take  me  with  you  to 
taste  of  the  things  of  the  earth,  I  shall  know  that  you 
are  true."  So  the  duck  took  the  mosquito  under 
his  wing,  where  he  would  keep  dry,  and  dived  down 
with  him  to  the  bottom  of  the  water,  and  as  soon  as 
they  touched  the  ground  all  the  water  disappeared. 
There  was  now  nothing  living  on  the  earth. 

Then  Atiucli  determined  that  he  would  again  make 
men,  and  he  did  so.  But  again  he  made  them  too 
nearly  like  himself.  They  were  too  powerful,  and  he 
was  afraid  of  them,  and  again  destroyed  them  all. 

Then  he  made  one  man  like  the  men  of  to-day. 
When  this  man  had  been  created  he  said  to  himself  : 
"  How  is  it  now  ?  There  is  still  something  that  does 
not  quite  please  me."  Then  Atiucli  made  a  woman, 
and  set  her  by  the  man,  and  the  man  said  :  "  You 
knew  why  I  was  not  pleased.  You  knew  what  I 
wanted.  Now  I  can  walk  the  earth  in  gladness." 


188  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

AtiucJi  seems  to  have  made  men  and  the  animals 
up  above  in  the  sky  where  he  lives,  and  when  he  was 
satisfied  with  what  he  had  made,  he  resolved  to  place 
them  upon  the  earth.  So  he  called  the  lightning  to 
put  them  on  the  earth,  and  the  lightning  caused  a 
cloud  to  come,  and  the  cloud  received  what  Atiucli 
had  made.  But  the  lightning,  acting  as  he  always 
does,  set  them  down  on  the  earth  with  a  crash,  and  as 
the  ground  was  still  wet  with  the  water  that  had  cov 
ered  it,  they  all  sank  into  the  soft  earth.  This  made 
the  lightning  feel  very  badly,  and  he  cried ;  and  to  this 
day,  whenever  he  strikes  the  earth,  he  cries.  That  is 
what  we  hear  when  it  thunders. 

Now  all  living  things  were  under  the  ground  in 
confusion  and  asking  one  another  what  each  was ; 
but  one  day,  as  the  mole  was  digging  around,  he 
broke  a  hole  through,  so  that  the  light  streamed  in, 
and  he  drew  back  frightened.  He  has  never  had 
any  eyes  since ;  the  light  put  them  out.  The  mole 
did  not  want  to  come  out,  but  all  the  others  came 
out  on  to  the  earth  through  the  hole  the  mole  had 
made. 

After  they  had  come  out  from  the  ground,  the 
people  looked  about  to  see  where  they  should  go. 
They  had  nothing.  They  did  not  know  what  to  do, 
nor  how  to  support  themselves.  They  began  to  travel, 
moving  very  slowly ;  but  after  their  third  day's  camp 
a  boy,  who  had  been  left  behind  asleep  at  the  first 
camp  that  they  had  made,  overtook  the  company, 
carrying  in  his  arms  a  large  bundle.  The  people 
asked  him  what  this  was.  He  replied  that  when  he 
woke  up  and  found  the  people  gone,  he  cried  to 
Father  for  help,  and  Father  gave  him  this  bundle, 
which  had  taught  him  to  find  the  way  to  his  people. 


HIS  CREATION.  189 

Then  the  people  were  glad,  and  said  that  now  they 
would  find  the  way,  and  they  went  on. 

After  they  had  gone  a  long  way,  they  came  to  a 
deep  ravine  with  high  steep  banks,  and  they  could 
not  cross  it.  There  they  had  to  stop.  All  came  to 
this  place,  but  they  could  not  get  over  it.  They 
asked  the  boy  what  they  should  do,  and  he  opened 
the  bundle,  and  out  of  it  came  a  bird  with  a  sharp 
bill  * — the  most  sacred  of  all  birds,  the  bone  striker. 
Wherever  this  bird  strikes  its  bill,  it  makes  a  hole. 
This  bird  flew  over  the  ravine  and  began  to  strike 
the  bank  with  his  bill,  and  flew  against  the  bank 
again  and  again,  and  at  last  the  dirt  fell  down  and 
filled  up  the  ravine  and  made  a  road  for  the  people 
to  pass  across.  A  part  of  them  passed  over,  but  be 
fore  all  had  crossed,  the  road  closed  up,  and  the  ravine 
became  as  it  had  been  at  first.  Those  who  were  be 
hind  perished.  They  were  changed  into  badgers, 
snakes,  and  animals  living  in  the  ground.  They 
went  on  further,  and  at  length  came  to  a  thick  wood 
— so  thick  that  they  could  not  pass  through  it.  Here 
they  had  to  stop,  for  they  did  not  know  how  they 
could  get  through  this  timber.  Again  they  asked  the 
boy  what  should  be  done,  and  he  opened  the  bundle, 
and  an  owl  came  out  from  it  and  went  into  the  wood 
and  made  a  path  through  it.  A  number  of  the  peo 
ple  got  through  the  wood,  but  some  old  women  and 
poor  children  were  lagging  behind,  and  the  road 
closed  up  and  caught  them,  and  these  were  changed 
to  bears,  wildcats,  elks,  and  so  on. 

The  people  went  on  further,  and  came  to  a  big 
river  which  poured  down  and  stopped  them,  and  they 

*  This  is  thought  to  be  a  woodpecker  (Colaptes). 


190  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

waited  on  the  bank.  When  they  went  to  the  bundle, 
a  big  hawk  came  out  of  it.  This  bird  flew  across 
the  river  and  caused  the  water  to  stop  flowing.  They 
started  across  the  dry  river  bed,  and  when  part  had 
gone  across  and  were  on  this  side,  and  some  old 
women  and  poor  children  were  still  in  the  stream  bed, 
the  water  began  to  flow  again  and  drowned  them. 
These  people  were  turned  into  fishes,  and  this  is  why 
fishes  are  related  to  men. 

They  went  on  until  they  came  to  some  high  hills 
called  the  Blue  Mountains,  and  from  these  mountains 
they  saw  a  beautiful  country  that  they  thought  would 
be  good  to  live  in ;  but  when  they  consulted  the  boy 
who  carried  the  bundle,  he  said,  "  No,  we  shall  see 
life  and  live  in  it."  So  they  went  on. 

Soon  after  this,  some  people  began  to  gamble,  and 
one  party  won  everything  that  the  others  had,  and  at 
last  they  began  to  quarrel  and  then  to  fight,  and  the 
people  separated  and  went  different  ways,  and  the 
animals,  which  had  all  this  time  been  with  them,  got 
frightened  and  ran  away.  But  some  of  the  people 
still  remained,  and  they  asked  the  boy  what  they 
should  do,  and  he  went  to  the  bundle  and  took  from 
it  a  pipe,  and  when  he  held  up  the  pipe  the  fighting 
ceased.  With  the  pipe  was  a  stone  arrowhead,  and 
the  boy  told  them  they  must  make  others  like  this, 
for  from  now  on  they  would  have  to  fight ;  but  be 
fore  this  there  had  been  no  war.  In  the  bundle  they 
found  also  an  ear  of  corn.  The  boy  said :  "  We  are 
to  live  by  this.  This  is  our  Mother."  The  corn 
taught  them  how  to  make  bows  and  arrows. 

Now  the  people  no  longer  spoke  one  language, 
and  the  eight  tribes  who  had  run  away  no  longer 
understood  each  other  and  lived  together,  but  wan- 


HIS  CREATION.  191 

dered  about,  and  the  Mother  (Atind  =  Pawnee  Atira) 
no  longer  remained  with  them,  but  left  them  alone. 
The  ninth  or  remaining  band — which  included  the 
Rees,  Mandans,  and  Pawnees — now  left  the  Blue 
Mountains  and  travelled  on  until  they  reached  a  great 
river,  and  then  they  knew  what  the  boy  meant  by 
saying  "  We  shall  see  life  and  live  in  it."  Life  meant 
the  Missouri  River,  and  they  said,  "  This  is  the  place 
where  our  Mother  means  us  to  live."  The  first  night 
they  stayed  by  the  river,  but  they  went  off  in  the 
morning  and  left  behind  them  two  dogs  asleep.  One 
was  black,  the  other  white ;  one  was  male,  the  other 
female.  At  the  third  camp  they  said,  "  This  is  a 
good  place ;  we  will  live  here."  They  asked  the  boy 
what  they  should  do,  and  he  told  them  that  they 
should  separate  into  three  bands ;  that  he  would  di 
vide  the  corn  among  them,  and  they  could  plant  it. 
He  broke  off  the  nub  and  gave  it  to  the  Mandans,  the 
big  end  and  gave  it  to  the  Pawnees,  and  the  middle  of 
the  ear  he  gave  to  the  Rees.  To  this  day  the  Mandans 
have  the  shortest  corn,  the  Rees  next  in  size,  and  the 
Pawnees  the  best  and  largest.  He  also  took  from  the 
bundle  beans,  which  he  divided  among  the  people, 
and  the  sack  of  a  buffalo's  heart  full  of  tobacco, 
Here  by  the  river  they  first  planted  and  ate,  and  were 
well  off,  while  the  eight  bands  that  had  run  away 
were  dying  of  hunger.  When  they  got  here  they  had 
no  fire.  They  knew  nothing  of  it.  They  tried  to  get 
it  from  the  sun,  and  sent  the  swallow  to  bring  it.  He 
flew  toward  the  sun,  but  could  not  get  the  fire,  and 
came  back  saying  that  the  sun  had  burned  him.  This 
is  why  the  swallow's  back  is  black  to-day.  The  crow 
was  sent.  He  used  to  be  white,  but  the  sun  burned  him 
too.  Another  kind  of  bird  was  sent,  and  he  got  the  fire. 


192  THE  STORY  OP  THE  INDIAN. 

After  this  they  travelled  again,  and  as  they  trav 
elled  they  were  followed  by  two  great  fires,  that  came 
up  on  the  hills  behind  them  and  shut  them  in,  so  that 
they  did  not  know  how  to  escape.  The  bundle  told 
them  to  go  to  a  cedar  tree  on  a  precipice,  and  that  if 
they  held  fast  to  this,  they  would  not  be  hurt  by  these 
two  great  bad  things.  They  did  so  and  escaped,  but 
all  cedars  have  been  crooked  ever  since.  These  two 
great  fires  were  the  two  dogs  that  had  been  left  behind 
at  their  first  camp.  These  dogs  then  came  to  them 
and  said  :  "Our  hearts  are  not  all  bad.  We  have  bit 
ten  you  because  you  left  us  without  waking  us  up, 
but  now  we  have  had  our  revenge,  and  we  want  to  live 
with  you."  But  sickness  and  death  have  followed  the 
people  ever  since  they  first  left  these  dogs  behind. 

The  dogs  were  taken  back  into  the  company  and 
grew  old.  The  female  dog  grew  old  and  poor  and 
died  first,  and  was  thrown  into  the  river,  and  after 
that  the  male  dog  died  ;  but  before  he  died  they  said 
to  him,  "  Now  you  are  going  to  die  and  be  with  your 
wife."  "  Yes,"  he  replied.  "  But  you  will  not  hate 
us.  From  this  time  you  will  eat  us,  and  so  you  will 
think  well  of  us.  And  from  the  female  dog's  skin  has 
come  the  squash,  and  you  will  like  this,  and  on  this 
account,  also,  you  will  not  hate  us."  So  ever  since 
that  day,  dogs  have  been  raised  as  friends,  and  after 
ward  eaten  for  revenge,  because  of  their  treachery. 

After  this,  they  looked  out  on  the  prairie  and 
saw  some  great  black  animals  having  horns,  and  they 
looked  as  though  they  were  going  to  attack  them. 
The  people  dug  a  hole,  and  got  in  and  covered  it 
over,  and  when  the  buffalo  rushed  on  them  they  were 
safe,  though  their  dwelling  trembled  and  the  people 
thought  the  roof  would  fall  in.  Finally  some  one 


£ 

iT 


I 


HIS  CREATION.  193 

looked  out  and  saw  the  buffalo  standing  around. 
They  did  not  look  very  fierce,  so  forty  men,  women, 
and  children  ventured  out ;  but  the  buffalo  attacked 
them,  tore  off  their  arms  and  ate  them,  and  tore  off 
their  hair.  Ever  since  that  time  there  has  been  a  lock 
of  Eee  hair  in  the  buffalo's  mouth,  hanging  down 
from  his  chin.  One  handsome  young  woman  was  car 
ried  off  by  the  buffalo.  They  held  a  council  to  know 
what  they  should  do  with  her.  She  said  she  could 
not  travel,  and  they  did  not  wish  to  kill  her.  They 
did  not  wish  to  let  her  go  either.  But  one  night,  when 
she  was  sleeping  in  the  midst  of  the  band,  a  young 
bull  came  to  her  and  pulled  her  sleeve  and  told  her 
to  follow  him,  that  he  would  show  her  the  way  back 
to  her  people.  He  did  so,  and  his  parting  words  to 
her  were  :  "  Tell  your  people  that  we  do  not  like  the 
bows  and  arrows  that  -they  make,  and  so  we  have  at 
tacked  you."  * 

The  young  woman  was  gladly  received.  They  asked 
the  boy  with  the  bundle  what  should  be  done  with  the 
buffalo.  He  answered  :•  "  The  buffalo  are  to  be  our 
food.  They  ate  us  first,  so  now  we  will  always  fol 
low  them  for  food.  We  must  make  arrows  like  the 

*  The  Algonquin  Blackfeet  also  tell  of  a  time  soon  after  the 
creation  when  the  buffalo  used  to  eat  them.  This  was  before 
they  had  bows  and  arrows  ;  in  fact,  in  some  accounts  it  is  even 
said  that  then  the  people  had  paws  like  the  bears,  and  supported 
themselves  by  digging  roots  and  gathering  berries.  When  Ndpi, 
the  Blackfoot  Creator,  learned  that  the  buffalo  were  killing  and 
eating  the  people,  he  felt  very  badly,  and  he  split  their  paws  so 
as  to  make  fingers  on  them,  and  made  bows  and  arrows  and 
taught  the  people  how  to  use  them.  There  is  also  a  Blackfoot 
story  of  a  young  woman  who  was  captured  and  taken  away 
by  the  buffalo,  and  who  afterward  returned  to  the  tribe. — See 
Blackfoot  Lodge  Tales,  pp.  104  and  140. 


194:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

one  Tinawd  (—  Pawnee  Tirdwa)  gave  us  with  the  pipe, 
and  fight  the  buffalo  with  them."  After  making  many 
arrows  of  the  flint  they  use  for  striking  fires,  they  all 
came  out  of  the  hole  in  the  earth  and  lived  by  plant 
ing  and  hunting. 

The  Rees  have  always  kept  near  the  Missouri  River, 
and  have  lived  by  planting.  The  bundle  reputed 
to  have  been  given  to  the  boy  in  the  beginning  is 
now  in  the  house  of  Two  Crows.  It  is  still  powerful. 
It  contains  the  ear  of  corn  which  was  first  given  to 
the  Rees.  When  a  great  young  man  dies — a  chief's 
son — and  the  people  mourn,  the  relations  are  asked  to 
the  Ree  medicine  lodge,  and  the  ear  of  corn  is  taken 
from  the  bundle,  put  for  a  short  time  in  a  bucket  of 
water  and  then  replaced  in  the  bundle.  As  many  as 
drink  of  that  water  are  cured  of  sad  hearts,  and  never 
mourn  their  friends  again. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE   WORLD   OF   THE    DEAD. 

LIKE  most  people,  civilized  or  savage,  the  Indian 
believes  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  To  him  the 
future  life  is  very  real,  for  sometimes — in  dreams  or 
during  a  fainting  fit,  or  in  delirium  of  sickness — vi 
sions  come  to  him  which  he  believes  are  glimpses  into 
the  life  of  another  world — a  world  peopled  by  the 
spirits  of  the  departed.  It  is  always  difficult  to  induce 
the  Indian  to  formulate  his  views  on  the  future  life. 
Often  perhaps  he  has  none,  or  if  he  has  such  beliefs, 
like  our  own  on  the  same  subject,  they  are  vague  and 
hazy.  Besides  this,  Indians  are  little  accustomed  to 
deal  with  abstract  conceptions,  and  lack  words  to 
express  them.  Nevertheless,  some  notion  of  their  be 
liefs  may  be  gathered  from  the  accounts  which  they 
give  of  ghosts  and  the  ghost  country,  for  all  the  tribes 
have  tales  which  speak  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  spirit 
world,  and  tell  us  what  they  do  and  how  they  live. 
Such  stories  purport  to  come  from  those  who  have 
died  and  have  been  restored  to  life  again,  or  from  liv 
ing  persons  who  have  visited  the  country  where  the 
spirits  dwell,  and  then  returning  to  their  tribe  have 
reported  the  condition  and  the  ways  of  the  departed. 

The  views  held  of  this  world  of  the  dead  differ 
widely  in  different  tribes.  With  some  it  appears  to 
be  a  real  "  happy  hunting  ground,"  a  country  of  wide 
14  195 


196  THE  STORY  OP  THE  INDIAN. 

green  prairies  and  cool  clear  streams,  where  the  buffalo 
and  other  game  are  always  plenty  and  fat,  where  the 
lodges  are  ever  new  and  white,  the  ponies  always 
swift,  the  war  parties  successful,  and  the  people  hap 
py.  Sometimes,  even  now,  the  Indian  of  the  south, 
when  the  slanting  rays  of  the  westering  sun  tinge  the 
autumnal  haze  with  red,  beholds  dimly,  far  away,  the 
white  lodges  of  such  a  happy  camp,  and,  dazzled  by 
the  tinted  beams,  sees  through  the  mist  and  dust 
ghostly  warriors  returning  from  the  buffalo  hunt, 
leading  horses  laden  as  in  olden  times  with  dripping 
meat  and  with  shaggy  skins.  A  speech  made  by  the 
spirit  of  a  Pawnee  woman  shows  the  feeling  that  these 
people  have  about  the  future  life.  This  woman  not 
long  after  her  death  appeared  to  her  husband,  who, 
holding  their  young  child  in  his  arms,  was  mourning 
for  her,  and  said  :  "  You  are  very  unhappy  here. 
There  is  a  place  to  go  where  we  would  not  be  unhappy. 
Where  I  have  been  nothing  bad  happens  to  one.  Here 
you  never  know  what  evil  will  come  to  you.  You  and 
the  child  had  better  come  to  me."  In  the  same  story 
father  and  mother  and  child  at  last  die,  and  it  is  said 
of  them,  "  They  have  gone  to  that  place  where  there  is 
a  living  " — strong  testimony  to  the  Pawnee's  faith  in 
a  happy  future  life.* 

With  other  tribes  the  ghost  country  is  a  land  of 
unrealities,  where  the  unhappy  shadows  endure  an 
existence  which  is  an  unsubstantial  mockery  of  this 
life.  Here  they  hunt  shadow  buffaloes  with  arrows, 
which,  on  being  lifted  from  the  ground,  are  found  to  be 
only  blades  of  grass ;  their  camps  or  their  buffalo  traps 
when  approached  vanish  from  sight ;  or  their  canoes, 

*  Pawnee  Hero  Stories  and  Folk-Tales,  p.  129, 


.  THE  WORLD  OF  THE  DEAD.      19? 

though  real  to  the  ghosts,  are  to  mortal  eyes  rotten, 
moss-covered  and  full  of  holes ;  their  salmon  and  trout 
are  only  dead  branches  and  leaves,  floating  on  the 
river's  current,  and  even  the  people  themselves,  though 
to  all  appearance  human,  turn  to  skeletons  if  a  word 
is  spoken  above  a  whisper. 

To  us,  who  have  been  reared  in  the  hope  of  an  im 
mortality  which  promises  happiness,  there  is  some 
thing  inexpressibly  pathetic  in  these  vague  concep 
tions  of  a  future  life  which  is  so  much  more  miserable 
than  the  savage  existence  in  this  world,  checkered 
though  it  is ;  for  even  to  the  savage,  while  he  is  still 
alive,  hope  always  remains.  If  his  camp  has  been  at 
tacked,  his  people  slain,  and  he  himself  is  a  fugitive, 
hiding  from  enemies  who  are  eager  to  take  his  life,  he 
looks  forward  to  a  time  when  he  shall  take  vengeance 
for  these  wrongs  and  destroy  those  who  have  injured 
him ;  or  if  the  people  are  starving,  and  he  sees  his 
wives  and  little  ones  wasting  away  with  hunger,  he 
thinks  always  that  to-morrow  may  bring  the  buffalo 
and  plenty  and  contentment.  But  to  this  gloomy 
future  life  there  is  no  period.  It  must  go  on  forever. 

The  melancholy  views  of  a  future  state  held  by 
such  tribes  as  the  Blackfeet,  the  Gros  Ventres  of  the 
Prairie,  the  Chinooks,  and  some  other  Pacific  slope 
tribes,  present  singular  resemblances  to  those  ex 
pressed  in  the  earlier  Greek  and  Eoman  mythology. 

The  spirits  of  the  dead  take  various  forms,  but 
they  are  always  unsubstantial  as  air,  though  to  the  eye 
they  may  appear  real.  They  are  frequently  seen  by 
living  persons,  but  are  likely  to  vanish  at  any  moment. 
The  tiny  whirlwinds  of  dust  often  seen  moving  about 
on  the  prairie  in  hot  summer  days  are  believed  by  the 
Pawnees  to  be  ghosts,  by  other  tribes  owls  are  thought 


198  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

to  be  ghosts.  Sometimes  spirits  take  the  forms  of 
skeletons,  which  may  be  able  to  walk  about,  or  they 
may  appear  as  ordinary  men  and  women.  It  seems 
possible  that  these  spirits  can  at  will  take  forms  such 
as  please  them,  and  in  a  specific  case  a  ghost  appeared 
in  the  form  of  a  bear,  and  in  another  it  took  the  shape 
of  a  wolf.  To  see  a  ghost  is  by  no  means  an  every- day 
matter.  Much  more  often  they  are  heard  to  speak  or 
to  whistle,  and  such  sounds  terrify  those  who  hear 
them,  for  the  Indians  are  much  afraid  of  ghosts. 
Some  of  these  spirits  are  beneficent,  others  are  harm 
ful,  and  of  the  latter,  being  the  more  dreaded,  much 
more  is  heard  than  of  those  which  wield  kindly  pow 
ers.  The  hurtful  ghosts  frighten  people  by  tugging 
at  their  blankets  while  they  are  walking  through  the 
timber  at  night,  or  they  whistle  down  the  smokehole, 
or  tap  on  the  lodge  skins.  Such  acts,  though  suffi 
ciently  alarming,  are  not  in  themselves  very  serious, 
and  may  perhaps  be  indulged  in  only  for  the  sake  of 
frightening  people.  But  the  spirits  that  are  really 
inimical  do  much  more  terrible  things  than  these. 
They  shoot  arrows  of  disease  at  people,  causing  rheu 
matism,  paralysis,  St.  Vitus's  dance,  long  wasting  ill 
ness,  and  oftentimes  death. 

The  actual  location  of  the  world  of  spirits — the 
home  of  the  dead — varies  with  the  tribe.  Many  of 
the  peoples  of  the  southern  plains  believe  to-day  that 
this  home  of  the  dead  is  above  us,  in  or  above  the 
sky ;  others  hold  that  it  is  to  the  west,  beyond  the  big 
water ;  others  still  think  that  it  is  in  the  south  or  east. 
The  Blackfeet  locate  this  country  of  the  future  close 
to  their  present  home,  in  the  desolate  sandhills  south 
of  the  Saskatchewan  Kiver. 

Occasionally,  glimpses  are  seen  among  some  tribes 


•  THE  WORLD  OF  THE  DEAD.       199 

of  a  belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls.  The  Kla- 
math  and  Modoc  Indians  believe  that  the  spirits  of 
the  dead  inhabit  the  bodies  of  fishes.  The  ghosts  of 
medicine  men,  conjurors,  or  priests,  after  death  are 
often  thought  to  take  the  shape  of  an  owl — always  a 
bird  of  mysterious,  if  not  supernatural,  powers — or  the 
soul  of  a  very  brave  man  might  after  death  inhabit 
the  body  of  some  brave,  fierce  animal,  like  a  bear. 
Yet  this  is  not  supposed  to  happen  commonly,  nor  do 
the  helpful  animals  which  so  constantly  appear  in  the 
folk  stories  of  the  Indians  ever  seem  to  be  the  spirits 
of  those  who  have  lived  on  earth.  These  belong  to  a 
class  of  beings  entirely  different  from  mortals. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  creation  story  of  the 
Arikaras,  which  details  also  the  earlier  wanderings  of 
the  first  Indians,  it  is  said,  as  already  remarked,  that 
certain  people  who  were  overwhelmed  by  water,  by 
land  slides,  and  in  forest  fallings,  were  changed  into 
fishes  and  various  other  animals  which  live  principally 
under  ground  or  in  the  woods. 

Some  Indians  believe  in  reincarnation,  the  indi 
vidual  at  each  succeeding  birth  retaining  the  sex  and 
the  same  peculiar  physical  characteristics.  It  is  re 
lated  that  a  certain  chief  of  the  Wrangel  Indians 
named  Harsha,  who  died  about  two  hundred  years 
ago,  has  since  been  reincarnated  five  times,  and  at 
each  birth  is  knov/n  by  the  scar  of  a  stab  in  the  right 
groin.  Another  chief,  reincarnated  three  times,  is 
always  recognised  by  a  peculiar  lock  of  gray  hair. 
These  Indians  believe  that  heaven — or  the  abode  of 
the  spirits — is  above  us.  It  is  reached  by  a  ladder 
and  entered  through  a  hole  at  the  point  where  the 
ladder  ends. 

In  almost  all  the   tribes  it  is  believed  that  per- 


200  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

sons  who  have  died  may,  under  extraordinary  circum 
stances,  become  alive  again ;  in  other  words,  that  the 
ghosts  may  return  from  the  ghost  country  to  the  tribal 
home,  resuming  their  mortal  shapes,  and  to  all  appear 
ance  again  becoming  persons.  There  seems  always  a 
possibility,  however,  that  such  returned  ghosts  will 
vanish  on  some  provocation  or  other.  This  idea,  which 
is  found  among  the  tribes  of  the  plains,  the  moun 
tains,  and  the  Pacific  coast,  is  common  to  the  folk 
stories  of  all  races.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  however, 
that  the  story  of  a  ghost  who  had  returned  to  life 
and  had  afterward,  through  some  fault  of  relations  or 
friends,  been  forced  to  disappear,  would  be  much  more 
likely  to  be  preserved  in  the  unwritten  literature  of  a 
tribe  than  one  telling  of  a  person  who,  after  having 
died,  has  come  to  life,  and  then  has  remained  with  the 
tribe,  living  out  a  full  term  of  years. 

I  have  met  several  men  who  believe  that  they  them 
selves  have  died,  visited  the  camps  of  the  ghosts,  and 
then  for  some  reason  returned  to  life  and  to  their 
homes,  and  some  of  them  have  related  to  me  what 
they  had  seen  in  the  ghost  country.  Besides  this,  I 
have  been  told  many  other  stories,  which  relate  with 
more  or  less  detail  what  is  done  and  said  there.  A 
study  of  such  stories  will  present  as  clear  an  idea  of 
this  future  life,  and  the  way  it  is  regarded  by  the  In 
dians,  as  can  be  given  in  any  other  way. 

Some  of  these  stories  resemble  in  a  remarkable  de 
gree  tales  of  other  lands,  which  are  familiar  even  to 
our  children.  One  of  these,  told  with  some  detail,  is 
of  singular  interest,  for  it  presents  a  close  parallel  to 
the  classical  myth  of  Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  but  the 
Indian  hero  was  more  fortunate  than  his  Old  World 
prototype,  for  he  was  successful  in  his  quest,  and  re- 


THE  WORLD  OF  THE  DEAD.      201 

covered  the  wife  for  whose  sake  he  had  faced  the  hor 
rors  of  the  ghost  country  and  the  peril  of  death. 

Interesting  in  connection  with  such  visits  paid  by 
human  beings  to  the  supernatural  world  are  the  fre 
quent  allusions  in  these  accounts  to  the  peculiar  odour 
exhaled  by  living  persons.  The  gods,  or  the  ghosts, 
when  they  come  near  to  the  place  where  the  individual 
is  concealed,  often  discern  his  presence  by  this  odour, 
and  call  out,  "  I  smell  a  person,"  or  "  What  is  this  bad 
smell?"  The  burning  of  sweet  grass  or  sweet  pine 
usually  purifies  the  air,  so  that  the  smell  is  no  longer 
complained  of. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

PAWKEE    KELIGI02ST. 

VOLUMES  might  be  written  on  the  Indian  religion 
without  exhausting  it.  The  different  beliefs  of  the 
various  tribes,  their  ceremonial,  and  the  religious  his 
tory,  as  given  in  their  traditions,  comprise  an  interest 
ing  and  difficult  study.  As  a  specific  example  of  the 
religious  beliefs  of  a  particular  tribe,  I  quote  an  ac 
count  of  the  Pawnee  religion  taken  from  the  paper  * 
already  mentioned.  It  gives  a  somewhat  detailed 
statement  of  the  faith  of  that  people  when  I  first 
knew  them,  and  before  they  had  been  greatly  changed 
by  contact  with  civilization. 

The  Deity  of  the  Pawnees  is  Atius  Tirdtva.\  He 
is  an  intangible  spirit,  omnipotent  and  beneficent. 
He  pervades  the  universe,  and  is  its  supreme  ruler. 
Upon  his  will  depends  everything  that  happens.  He 
can  bring  good  luck  or  bad ;  can  give  success  or  fail 
ure.  Everything  rests  with  him.  As  a  natural  con 
sequence  of  this  conception  of  the  Deity,  the  Pawnees 
are  a  very  religious  people.  Nothing  is  undertaken 
without  a  prayer  to  the  Father  for  assistance.  When 
the  pipe  is  lighted,  the  first  few  whiffs  are  blown  to 
the  Deity.  When  food  is  eaten,  a  small  portion  of  it 

*  Journal  of  American  Folk-Lore,  vol.  vi,  p.  113,  1893. 
f  Atius  =  father.     Tirdwa  —  spirit. 
203 


PAWNEE   RELIGION.  2Q3 

is  placed  on  the  ground  as  a  sacrifice  to  him.  He  is 
propitiated  by  burnt  offerings.  When  they  started 
off  on  the  summer  and  winter  hunts,  a  part  of  the 
first  animal  which  was  killed,  either  a  deer  or  buffalo, 
was  burned  to  him.  The  first  buffalo  killed  by  a 
young  boy  was  offered  to  him.  The  common  prayer 
among  the  Pawnees  is,  "  Father,  you  are  the  Euler." 
They  always  acknowledge  his  power  and  implore  his 
help.  He  is  called  "  Father,  who  is  above  " ;  "  Fa 
ther,  who  is  in  all  places." 

Tirawa  lives  up  above  in  the  sky.  They  say, 
"  The  heavens  are  the  house  of  Tirdwa,  and  we  live 
inside  of  it."  The  overarching  hemisphere  of  the 
sky,  which  on  all  sides  reaches  down  to  earth  at  the 
horizon,  in  their  minds  is  likened  to  the  walls  and  roof 
of  the  dome-shaped  dirt  lodges,  which  the  Pawnees  in 
habit.  A  similar  conception  prevails  among  the  Black- 
feet. 

Next  in  importance  to  Atius  comes  the  Earth, 
which  is  greatly  reverenced.  The  Pawnees  came  out 
of  the  earth  and  return  to  it  again.  The  first  whiffs 
of  the  pipe  are  offered  to  Atius,  but  after  these  smokes 
to  him,  the  next  are  blown  to  the  earth,  and  the 
prayer,  "  Father  of  the  dead,  you  see  us,"  is  expressed. 
Not  very  much  is  said  by  the  Pawnees  about  the  rev 
erence  which  they  feel  for  the  earth,  but  much  is  told 
about  the  power  of  the  Mother  Corn,  "  through  which 
they  worship,"  which  cares  for  and  protects  them, 
which  taught  them  much  that  they  know,  and  which, 
symbolizing  the  earth,  represents  in  material  form 
something  which  they  revere.  A  Ree  priest  said  to 
me :  "  Just  as  the  white  people  talk  about  Jesus 
Christ,  so  we  feel  about  the  corn."  Various  explana 
tions  are  given  of  the  term  "  Mother,"  which  is  ap- 


204  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

plied  to  the  corn,  but  none  are  altogether  satisfactory. 
The  reference  may  be  to  the  fact  that  the  corn  has 
always  supported  and  nourished  them,  as  the  child  is 
nourished  and  supported  by  its  mother's  milk,  or, 
with  a  deeper  meaning,  it  may  be  to  the  productive 
power  of  the  earth,  which  each  year  brings  forth  its 
increase. 

The  Sun  and  the  Moon  and  the  Stars  are  personi 
fied.  They  are  regarded  as  people,  and  prayers  are 
made  to  them.  There  is  some  reason  for  believing 
that  the  sun  and  the  moon  once  occupied  a  more  im 
portant  position  in  the  Pawnee  religious  system  than 
they  do  to-day.  There  are  some  songs  which  refer 
to  the  Sun  as  the  Father  and  the  Moon  as  the  Mother, 
as  if  the  sun  represented  the  male  and  the  moon  the 
female  principle.  O-pi-ri-kus,  the  Morning  Star,  is 
especially  revered  by  the  Skidi,  and  human  sacrifices 
were  made  to  it. 

It  is  represented  that  each  day  or  night  the  Sun, 
Moon,  and  Stars  paint  themselves  up  and  start  out 
on  a  journey,  returning  to  their  respective  lodges  after 
their  course  is  accomplished.  There  are  two  or  three 
versions  of  a  story  which  tells  of  a  young  woman 
taken  up  from  earth  by  a  Star  and  married  to  him. 
This  young  woman  lived  up  in  heaven  for  a  time,  but 
was  killed  while  attempting  to  escape  to  earth  again. 
Her  child — the  son  of  the  Star — reached  the  earth,  and 
lived  long  in  the  tribe.  He  had  great  power,  which  he 
derived  from  his  father. 

The  Thunder  is  reverenced  by  the  Pawnees,  and  a 
special  ceremony  of  sacrifice  and  worship  is  performed 
at  the  time  of  the  first  thunder  in  spring,  which  tells 
them  that  the  winter  is  at  an  end,  and  that  the  season 
for  planting  is  at  hand. 


PAWNEE  RELIGION.  205 

The  various  wild  animals  are  regarded  as  agents 
or  servants  of  Atius,  and  are  known  as  nahurac,  a 
word  which  means  animal.  It  does  not  refer  par 
ticularly  to  these  magical  or  mystical  animals  which 
are  the  Deity's  servants,  but  is  a  general  term  applied 
to  any  fish,  reptile,  bird,  or  beast.  The  nahurac  per 
sonify  the  various  attributes  of  Atius.  He  uses  them 
as  his  messengers,  and  they  have  great  knowledge  and 
power,  which  they  derive  from  him.  They  hold  a  re 
lation  to  the  supreme  power  very  similar  to  that  of 
the  angels  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  animals  which 
possess  these  peculiar  powers  are,  of  course,  not  real 
animals.  They  are — we  may  presume — spirits  who 
assume  these  shapes  when  they  appear  to  men.  Some 
times,  or  in  some  of  the  stories,  they  are  represented 
as  changing  from  the  animal  shape  to  that  of  men — as 
in  the  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Young  Dog's 
Dance.* 

Perhaps  no  one  at  the  present  day  could  specify 
the  precise  attributes  of  each  of  the  different  nahurac, 
but  there  are  certain  characteristics  which  are  well 
known  to  pertain  to  some  of  them. 

Of  all  the  animals,  none  was  so  important  to  the 
Pawnees  as  the  buffalo.  It  fed  and  clothed  them, 
and,  with  their  corn,  was  all  their  support.  This 
alone  was  enough  to  entitle  it  to  a  very  high  place  in 
their  esteem.  It  was  a  sacred  animal  of  great  power, 
and  was  a  favourite  secret  helper,  and  although  it  did 
not  receive  a  measure  of  reverence  equal  to  that  felt 
for  the  Mother  Corn,  it  was  yet  the  most  sacred  and 
highly  respected  of  all  the  animals.  The  eidolon  of 
the  buffalo — its  skull — occupied  a  prominent  position 

*  Journal  of  American  Folk-Lore,  vol.  iv,  p.  307. 


206  THE  STORY   OF   THE   INDIAN. 

in  many  of  the  Pawnee  sacred  ceremonies,  and  rested 
on  the  top  of  many  a  lodge,  signifying  that  it  was  the 
special  helper  of  the  owner.  Even  to-day,  although 
the  buffalo  has  long  been  extinct,  everywhere  in  the 
Ree  village  this  same  object  may  be  seen,  at  once  the 
relic  of  a  noble  animal  which  has  disappeared  from  the 
land,  and  the  symbol  of  a  faith  which  is  passing  away 
with  the  passing  of  a  people.  The  buffalo  appears  to 
have  typified  force  or  power,  as  well  as  the  quality 
of  dashing  blindly  onward.  Besides  this,  there  were 
some  buffaloes  which  were  invulnerable,  which  could 
not  be  killed  by  ordinary  weapons.  It  was  necessary 
to  rub  on  the  arrow  used  against  them,  or  in  later 
times  on  the  bullet,  a  peculiar  potent  medicine  before 
the  missile  would  penetrate  the  skin.  Such  buffaloes 
were  usually  described  as  sexless,  of  enormous  size, 
and  without  joints  in  their  legs. 

While  the  bear  was  by  no  means  so  sacred  as  the 
buffalo,  he  was  regarded  as  singular  for  wisdom  and 
power.  He  symbolizes  invulnerability.  He  knows 
how  to  cure  himself.  No  matter  how  badly  he  may 
be  wounded,  if  only  a  little  breath  is  left  in  his  body 
he  can  heal  himself.  It  is  said  that  sometimes  he 
does  this  by  plugging  up  with  certain  medicine  herbs 
the  wounds  which  have  been  inflicted  on  him.  He 
has  also  the  power  of  breathing  out  from  his  nostrils 
different-coloured  dusts — red,  blue,  and  yellow — or  of 
spitting  out  different-coloured  earths.  Certain  medi 
cine  bears  which  belonged  to  two  of  the  bands  could 
not  be  wounded  by  ball  or  arrow.  Of  one  of  these  it 
was  said,  "  The  lead  will  flatten  out,  the  spike  (of  the 
arrow)  will  roll  up  "  when  it  strikes  his  body. 

The  beaver  was  regarded  as  an  animal  of  great 
wisdom  and  power,  and  a  beaver  was  always  one  of  the 


PAWNEE  RELIGION.  207 

four  chiefs  who  ruled  the  councils  of  the  nahurac. 
Craft  was  typified  in  the  wolf ;  courage,  fierceness,  or 
success  in  war  by  the  birds  of  prey,  the  eagle  standing 
at  the  head ;  the  deer  stood  for  fleetness,  etc. 

The  black  eagle,  the  white-headed  eagle,  and  the 
buzzard  are  messengers  of  Tirdwa ;  by  them  he  sent 
his  orders  to  the  first  high  priest,  and  instructed  him 
in  the  secrets  of  his  priestship  and  in  the  other  se 
crets.  The  buzzard  and  the  white-headed  eagle  repre 
sent  the  old  men — those  who  have  little  hair  and  those 
whose  hair  is  white ;  it  is  from  these  ancient  men  that 
the  secrets  have  been  handed  down  from  generation 
to  generation. 

The  nahurac  had  an  organization  and  methods  of 
conveying  information  to  favoured  individuals.  They 
had  meeting  places  where  they  held  councils  which 
were  presided  over  by  chiefs.  The  meeting  places 
were  in  underground  lodges  or  caves,  and  there  were 
known  to  the  Pawnees,  when  they  lived  in  their  old 
home  in  Nebraska,  no  less  than  five  such  places. 
These  were  at  Pa-huk,  under  the  high  bluff  opposite 
Fremont,  Nebraska ;  at  Ah-ka-ivit' akol,  under  a  high 
white  bluff  at  the  mouth  of  the  Cedar  River ;  at  La- 
la-iva-kotitl-td,  under  an  island  in  the  Platte  Eiver 
opposite  the  Lone  Tree  (now  Central  City,  Nebraska)  ; 
under  the  Sacred  Spring  Kltz-a-wltz'uk,  on  the  Solo 
mon  River  in  Kansas ;  and  at  Paliu'r,  or  Guide  Rock, 
in  Kansas. 

Persons  who  were  pitied  by  the  nahurac  were 
sometimes  taken  into  the  lodges,  where  their  cases 
were  discussed  in  council,  and  they  were  helped,  and 
power  and  wisdom  were  given  them  by  the  animals. 
After  it  had  been  determined  that  he  should  thus  be 
helped,  the  various  animals,  one  after  another,  would 


208  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

rise  in  their  places  and  speak  to  the  man,  each  one 
giving  him  the  power  which  was  peculiar  to  itself.  In 
such  a  council  the  buffalo  would  often  give  the  man 
the  power  of  running  over  those  opposed  to  him : 
"  You  shall  run  over  your  enemies,  as  I  do  over  mine." 
The  bear  would  give  him  the  power  to  heal  himself  if 
wounded  and  to  cure  others.  The  eagle  would  give 
him  his  own  courage  and  fierceness :  "  You  shall  kill 
your  enemies,  as  I  do  mine."  The  wolf  would  give 
him  the  power  to  creep  right  into  the  midst  of  the 
enemy's  camp  without  being  seen.  The  owl  would 
say  to  him,  "  You  shall  see  in  the  night  as  I  do  " ;  the 
deer,  "  You  shall  run  as  fast  as  I  can."  So  it  would 
go  on  around  the  circle,  each  animal  giving  him  that 
power  or  that  knowledge  which  it  typified.  The 
speeches  made  in  such  nahurac  councils  were  similar 
in  character  to  those  which  would  be  made  in  any 
council  of  men. 

Usually  much  of  the  knowledge  taught  a  person, 
who  was  being  helped  by  the  nahurac,  was  that  of  the 
doctors,  and  those  who  had  received  this  help  were 
able  to  perform  all  those  wonderful  feats  in  the  doc 
tor's  dances  for  which  the  Pawnees  were  so  justly  re 
nowned.  Often,  too,  these  persons  were  made  invul 
nerable,  so  that  the  arrows  or  the  bullets  of  the  enemy 
would  not  penetrate  their  flesh. 

The  stay  of  the  individuals  who  might  be  taken 
into  the  nahurac  lodges  did  not,  as  a  rule,  last  longer 
than  four  days,  though  often  a  man  who  had  been 
once  received  there  might  come  again.  If  the  time 
mentioned  was  not  long  enough  to  enable  him  to  ac 
quire  all  the  knowledge  of  the  naliurac,  it  sometimes 
happened  that  after  such  a  visit  the  various  animals 
would  meet  the  person  singly  out  in  the  hills  or  on 


PAWNEE   RELIGION.  209 

the  prairie,  and  would  there  communicate  to  him  addi 
tional  knowledge,  especially  that  touching  on  the  effi 
cacy  of  various  roots  and  herbs  used  in  healing. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  nahurac  did  not  content 
themselves  with  giving  to  the  person  whom  they  pitied 
help,  and  nothing  more.  They  also  gave  him  good 
advice,  telling  him  to  trust  always  in  the  Euler,  and 
to  look  to  One  above,  who  is  the  giver  of  all  power. 
Often  they  explained  that  all  their  power  came  from 
Atius )  whose  servants  they  were ;  that  they  did  not 
make  themselves  great,  that  they  were  mortal,  and 
there  would  be  an  end  to  their  days. 

It  is  not  always  specified  what  shape  was  taken  by 
the  four  chiefs  who  ruled  the  nahurac  councils ;  but 
in  at  least  one  story  it  is  stated  that  these  were  a  beaver, 
an  otter,  a  sandhill  crane,  and  a  garfish.  In  another 
story  a  dog  appears  to  have  been  the  chief.  These 
animal  councils  had  a  servant  who  acted  as  their  mes 
senger,  and  carried  word  from  one  nahurac  lodge  to 
another.  This  bird  is  described  with  some  detail  in 
more  than  one  of  the  Pawnee  stories,  and  was  evi 
dently  a  species  of  tern. 

The  animals  were  the  usual  medium  of  communi 
cation  between  Atius  and  man.  They  most  often 
appeared  to  persons  in  sleep,  telling  them  what  to  do, 
giving  them  good  advice,  and  generally  ordering  their 
lives  for  them.  But  there  is  one  story  in  which  an 
individual  is  said  to  have  spoken  face  to  face  with  the 
Father. 

The  four  cardinal  points  were  respected  by  the 
Pawnees,  and  their  place  was  high,  although  they 
were  not  often  spoken  of,  except  in  prayers.  Still,  the 
formula  in  smoking  was  to  blow  first  four  smokes  to 
Atius ',  then  four  to  the  earth,  and  last  of  all  to  each 


210  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

of  the  cardinal  points.  The  east  represented  the 
night,  for  it  is  from  that  direction  that  the  darkness 
comes.  So,  in  one  of  the  stories,  a  speaker,  in  advising 
a  young  man  as  to  how  he  should  act,  says  of  smoking  : 
"And  always  blow  four  smokes  to  the  east,  to  the 
night ;  for  in  the  night  something  may  come  to  you. 
which  will  tell  you  a  thing  which  will  happen,"  that 
is,  come  true.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  closer  par 
allel  to  our  saying,  "  The  night  brings  counsel."  It 
is  worthy  of  note  that  this  conception  of  the  east  is 
the  absolute  reversal  of  our  notion  that  the  east  brings 
the  light — the  morning ;  one  of  the  most  familiar  fig 
ures  in  our  literature. 

Closely  connected  with  their  respect  for  the  night 
is  their  firm  confidence  in  dreams,  which  to  a  great 
extent  govern  their  lives.  Their  belief  in  a  future  life 
is  in  part  founded  on  dreams  which  they  have  had  of 
being  themselves  dead,  and  finding  themselves  in  vil 
lages  where  they  recognised  among  the  inhabitants 
relations  and  acquaintances  who  had  long  been  dead. 
The  faith  in  another  life  after  this  one  is  ended  is  ex 
emplified  by  stories  already  published,  which  tell  of 
the  coming  to  life  of  persons  who  have  died,  and  is 
fortified  by  the  experiences  of  certain  living  men  who 
believe  themselves  once  to  have  died  and  visited  these 
villages  of  the  dead. 

Prayers  for  direct  help  are,  as  a  rule,  made  only  to 
the  Father,  and  not  to  the  animals,  nor  to  the  Sun, 
Moon,  and  Stars.  But  the  last  are  constantly  implored 
to  act  as  intercessors  with  Atius  to  help  the  people. 
A  prayer  frequently  made  to  the  animals  by  a  person 
in  distress  was  this  :  "  If  you  have  any  power,  inter 
cede  for  me."  It  is  constantly  stated  in  the  tales  cur 
rent  among  the  Pawnees  that  in  minor  matters  the 


PAWNEE  RELIGION.  211 

animals  may  be  depended  on  for  help,  but  if  anything 
very  difficult  is  sought,  the  petitioner  must  look  only 
to  the  Father.  The  animals  seem  in  many  ways  to 
hold  a  position  in  the  Pawnee  religious  system  anal 
ogous  to  that  of  the  saints  in  the  Koman  Catholic 
faith. 

Something  must  be  said  about  the  sacred  bundles 
which  are  to  the  Pawnees  what  the  Ark  of  the  Cove 
nant  was  to  the  ancient  Israelites.  Concerning  these 
I  may  quote  what  has  been  written  : 

"  In  the  lodge  or  house  of  every  Pawnee  of  influ 
ence,  hanging  on  the  west  side,  and  so  opposite  the 
door,  is  the  sacred  bundle,  neatly  wrapped  in  buck 
skin,  and  black  with  smoke  and  age.  What  these 
bundles  contain  we  do  not  know.  Sometimes,  from 
the  ends,  protrude  bits  of  scalps,  and  the  tips  of  pipe- 
stems  and  slender  sticks ;  but  the  whole  contents  of 
the  bundle  are  known  only  to  the  priests  and  to  its 
owner — perhaps  not  always  even  to  him.  The  sacred 
bundles  are  kept  on  the  west  side  of  the  lodge,  because, 
being  thus  furthest  from  the  door,  fewer  people  will 
pass  by  them  than  if  they  were  hung  in  any  other  part 
of  the  lodge.  Various  superstitions  attach  to  these 
bundles.  In  the  lodges  where  certain  of  them  are 
kept  it  is  forbidden  to  put  a  knife  in  the  fire  ;  in 
others,  a  knife  may  not  be  thrown ;  in  others,  it  is  not 
permitted  to  enter  the  lodge  with  the  face  painted ;  or, 
again,  a  man  cannot  go  in  if  he  has  feathers  tied  in  his 
head. 

"  No  one  knows  whence  the  bundles  came.  Many 
of  them  are  very  old ;  too  old,  even,  to  have  a  history. 
Their  origin  is  lost  in  the  haze  of  the  long  ago.  They 
say  :  <  The  sacred  bundles  were  given  us  long  ago.  No 
one  knows  when  they  came  to  us.' " 
15 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  the  miracles  which  so  fre 
quently  occur  in  the  heroic  myths  of  the  Pawnees,  and 
which  generally  result  in  the  bringing  to  life  of  the 
person  who  is  pitied  by  the  nahurac,  often  take  place 
during  a  storm  of  rain  accompanied  by  wind  and  thun 
der.  Examples  of  this  are  found  in  the  stories  of  the 
Dun  Horse,  Pahukatawa,  Ore  ke  rahr,  and  others. 
The  rain,  the  wind,  and  the  thunder  may  be  regarded 
as  special  manifestations  of  the  power  of  the  Deity,  or 
these  may  perhaps  be  considered  as  veils  which  he  uses 
to  conceal  the  manifestations  of  this  power  from  the 
eyes  of  men. 

What  has  already  been  said  shows  that  the  mythol 
ogy  of  the  Pawnees  inculcates  strongly  the  religious 
idea,  and  impresses  upon  the  listener  the  importance 
of  trusting  in  the  Ruler  and  asking  his  help. 

Perhaps  the  most  singular  thing  about  this  Paw 
nee  religion,  as  it  has  been  taught  to  me,  is  its  close 
resemblance  in  many  particulars  to  certain  forms  of 
the  religion  of  Christ  as  it  exists  to-day.  While  their 
practices  were  those  of  a  savage  people,  their  theories 
of  duty  and  their  attitude  toward  the  Supreme  Being 
were  on  a  much  more  lofty  plane.  The  importance 
of  faith  in  the  Deity  is  most  strongly  insisted  on  ;  sac 
rifices  must  be  made  to  him — offerings  of  the  good 
things  of  this  earth,  often  of  parts  of  their  own  bodies ; 
penance  must  be  done.  But,  above  all  things  else, 
those  who  desire  success  in  life  must  humble  them 
selves  before  the  Deity  and  must  implore  his  help. 
The  lessons  taught  by  many  of  the  myths  are  precisely 
those  which  would  be  taught  by  the  Christian  priest 
to-day,  while  the  burnt-offerings  to  Atius  may  be 
compared  with  like  sacrifices  spoken  of  in  the  Old 
Testament,  and  the  personal  tortures  undergone  dur- 


PAWNEE  .RELIGION.  213 

ing  certain  of  their  ceremonies  are  almost  the  exact 
equivalents  of  the  sufferings  inflicted  on  themselves  by 
certain  religionists  of  the  middle  ages. 

On  the  whole,  the  Pawnee  religion,  so  far  as  I  un 
derstand  it,  is  a  singularly  pure  faith,  and  in  its  essen 
tial  features  will  compare  favourably  with  any  savage 
system.  If  written  in  our  own  sacred  books,  the  trust 
and  submission  to  the  will  of  the  Ruler  shown  in  some 
of  the  myths,  which  I  have  elsewhere  recorded,  would 
be  called  sublime.  What,  for  example,  could  be  finer 
than  the  prayer  offered  by  a  man  who,  through  the 
hostility  of  a  rival,  is  in  the  deepest  distress  and  ut 
terly  hopeless  of  human  aid,  and  who  throws  himself 
on  the  mercy  of  the  Creator,  and  at  the  same  time  im 
plores  the  intercession  of  the  nahurac  ?  This  man  pre 
pares  to  offer  his  horse  as  a  sacrifice  to  the  animals,  but 
before  killing  it  he  says  :  "  My  Father  [who  dwells]  in 
all  places,  it  is  through  you  that  I  am  living.  Perhaps 
it  was  through  you  that  this  man  put  me  in  this  con 
dition.  You  are  the  Ruler.  Nothing  is  impossible  to 
you.  If  you  see  fit,  take  this  [trouble]  away  from  me. 
Now  you,  all  fish  of  the  rivers,  and  you,  all  birds  of 
the  air,  and  all  animals  that  move  upon  the  earth,  and 
you,  0  Sun  !  I  present  to  you  this  animal.  You  birds 
in  the  air,  and  you  animals  upon  the  earth,  we  are  re 
lated  ;  we  are  alike  in  this  respect,  that  one  Ruler 
made  us  all.  You  see  me,  how  unhappy  I  am.  If 
you  have  any  power,  intercede  for  me." 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE   OLD   FAITH   AND   THE   NEW. 

No  subject  is  more  difficult  than  the  religion  of 
a  savage  people.  It  is  not  always  easy  to  determine 
just  what  are  the  beliefs  of  a  civilized  race.  Certain 
marked  differences  between  various  sects,  and  the  form 
and  ritual  of  each,  may  be  described  with  more  or  less 
accuracy,  but  the  actual  beliefs  are  hardly  to  be  arrived 
at.  This  is  partly  because  most  people  do  not  them 
selves  know  what  they  believe — or  at  least  have  never 
put  in  words  all  the  points  of  their  faith — and  also 
because  no  two  individuals  have  precisely  the  same 
belief. 

We  have  been  told  of  late  years  that  there  is  no 
evidence  that  any  tribe  of  Indians  ever  believed  in  one 
overruling  power,  yet  in  the  early  part  of  the  seven 
teenth  century  Jesuits  and  Puritans  alike  testified  that 
tribes  which  they  met  believed  in  a  god,  and  it  is  cer 
tain  that  at  the  present  time  many  tribes  worship  a 
Supreme  Being  who  is  the  Ruler  of  the  universe. 

In  the  case  of  many  of  these  tribes  this  god  lives 
up  above  in  the  sky  in  what  we  would  call  heaven,  but 
sometimes  his  abiding  place  is  under  the  ground  or 
again  at  the  different  cardinal  points.  The  Pawnees, 
as  already  stated,  now  locate  him  above,  yet  one  story 
which  they  tell  places  him  in  the  west  beyond  the 
big  water.  In  the  same  region  is  the  dwelling-place 

214 


THE  OLD  FAITH  AND  THE  NSW.       215 

of  the  Sun,  the  chief  Blackfoot  god.  Other  tribes 
place  their  principal  god  in  the  east,  and  often  his 
home  is  beyond  the  big  water  which  surrounds  the 
continent.  Some  tribes  west  of  the  Rockies  worship 
the  Wolf  as  chief  god  and  creator. 

I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  many  of  the  tribes  of 
this  continent  once  worshipped  the  Sun — as  some  still 
do — or  perhaps  originally  the  light  or  the  dawn  was 
the  god.  The  prayer  of  the  Blackfoot  invariably  be 
gins,  "  Hear  Sun,  hear  Old  Man,  Above  People  listen, 
Under- water  People  listen."  This  might  fairly  be 
called  a  prayer  to  the  Sun  as  the  supreme  ruler,  but 
also  an  appeal  to  all  the  powers  of  Nature  as  well.  A 
Pawnee  prayer  already  quoted  reverses  this  order,  and 
is  addressed  more  specifically  to  "  You  all  fish  of  the 
rivers,  you  all  birds  of  the  air,  and  all  animals  that 
move  upon  the  earth,  and  you,  0  Sun  ! " 

In  cases  where  the  Sun  is  the  Supreme  Father,  or 
old  man,  the  Moon  is  often  the  sun's  wife,  the  mother, 
the  old  woman ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Earth  may 
be  the  mother.  In  any  case  it  is  true  that  all  tribes 
have  a  great  reverence  for  the  earth,  which  they  regard 
as  the  producer  not  only  of  themselves  but  of  all  food, 
the  fruitful  one,  from  whom  comes  all  their  support. 
But  this  is  an  idea  which  is  as  broad  as  humanity; 
witness  our  own  figure  of  Mother  Earth.  In  fact,  with 
many  tribes  the  earth  seems  to  rank  as  the  second  of 
the  powers  or  influences  that  are  prayed  to,  and  in 
smoking,  though  the  first  smoke  and  prayer  is  offered 
to  the  power  above,  the  second  is  almost  invariably 
blown  downward  to  the  earth.  In  like  manner,  while 
some  tribes  in  blessing  or  in  healing  hold  up  the  palms 
of  the  hands  to  the  sunlight  before  passing  them  over 
the  person  to  be  blessed  or  the  part  to  be  cured, 


216  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

others,  as  the  Cheyennes,  place  the  palms  upon  the 
ground,  as  if  the  good  influence  was  to  be  derived 
from  the  earth. 

Besides  the  sun,  moon,  and  earth,  certain  of  the 
stars  are  held  in  especial  reverence,  and  this  is  true 
particularly  of  the  morning  star,  which  by  the  Black- 
feet  is  called  Early  Eiser,  and  is  believed  to  be  the  son 
of  the  Sun  and  Moon.  The  Skidi,  as  has  elsewhere 
been  stated,  made  special  sacrifices  to  this  planet, 
which  they  believed  to  have  great  influence  over  their 
crops.  Many  of  the  tribes  have  names  for  the  planets, 
the  brighter  stars,  and  the  more  important  constella 
tions,  and  relate  stories  to  account  for  their  existence 
or  for  the  grouping  of  the  stars.  Thus  the  Great 
Bear  is  called  the  Seven  Persons  by  the  Blackfeet, 
and  Broken  Back  by  the  Arapahoes ;  the  Pleiades, 
the  Seven  Stars  by  Pawnees  and  Blackfeet,  Grouped 
Together  Stars  by  the  Cheyennes.  Venus  is  known 
by  the  Cheyennes  as  "  Belonging  to  the  Moon."  The 
Milky  Way  is  called  Spirit  Eoad  by  the  Cheyennes, 
and  is  the  road  travelled  by  the  spirits  of  the  departed 
on  their  way  to  the  future  world.  The  Blackfeet  call 
it  the  Wolf  Road,  and  believe  it  the  short  trail  from 
the  Sun's  lodge  to  this  world.  Most  tribes  call  it  the 
Ghost's  Road. 

Besides  such  intangible  and  all-pervading  spirits 
as  the  Spirit  Father  of  the  Pawnees,  already  men 
tioned,  and  the  heavenly  bodies,  there  are  many  su 
pernatural  agencies  of  another  and  secondary  class, 
which  are  often  spoken  of  as  minor  gods,  but  which 
seem  rather  to  occupy  a  position  corresponding  very 
closely  to  the  saints  and  angels  of  our  religious  sys 
tem.  To  such  agencies — all  of  them  subordinate-  to 
the  supreme  power — prayers  are  offered  in  much  the 


THE  OLD  FAITH  AND  THE  NEW.          217 

same  way  that  for  many  centuries  petitions  have  been 
made  by  certain  sects  of  the  Christian  religion  to  saints 
and  holy  personages.  These  agencies,  which  often  as 
sume  a  material  shape,  and  which  appear  to  men  in 
the  form  of  beasts,  birds,  rocks,  buttes,  or  mountains, 
sometimes  represent  certain  forces  of  Nature,  or  again 
only  qualities  or  powers,  mental  or  physical.  These 
forces  or  qualities  do  not,  however,  invariably  take  a 
visible  shape ;  and  although  the  thunder  is  believed 
by  many  tribes  to  have  the  form  of  a  bird,  there  are 
others  by  which  it  has  never  been  seen. 

In  all  the  important  affairs  of  life  help  is  asked  of 
these  supernatural  agencies  ;  prayers  are  made  to  them 
and  sacrifices  offered — a  puff  of  smoke,  a  little  food,  or 
a  bit  of  tobacco  or  red  cloth.  They  occupy  the  posi 
tion  of  intercessors,  mediators  between  man  and  the 
supreme  power.  The  different  classes  of  these  super 
natural  agencies  which  appear  to  inhabit  the  air  and 
sky  above,  the  world  about  us  and  the  world  beneath 
us,  have  already  been  referred  to.  They  have  the 
power  to  give  to  favoured  ones  the  special  qualities 
which  each  represents,  and,  besides,  to  implore  for 
him  the  help  of  the  Deity.  To  the  man  who  fasted 
and  dreamed  for  power,  and  who — steadfastly  enduring 
the  hunger  and  thirst  and  the  frightful  visions  which 
so  often  caused  him  to  give  up  the  attempt — bore  all 
this  suffering  to  the  end,  one  of  these  supernatural 
agencies  would  often  appear  as  his  struggle  drew  to  a 
close,  and  though  at  first  perhaps  seeming  severe  and 
stern,  would  at  length  soften  and  become  more  kindly, 
and  would  then  offer  wise  counsel  and  friendly  ad 
vice,  promising  to  give  him  its  power  and  to  help  him 
through  life.  This  was  the  man's  secret  helper,  his 
"medicine,"  the  special  being  to  whom  his  prayers 


218  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

were  hereafter  offered.  This  is  what  is  meant  when  an 
Indian  is  spoken  of  as  having  been  "  helped  by  a  wolf," 
a  bear,  or  an  eagle. 

The  Indian,  however,  does  not  call  this  assisting 
power  by  any  of  these  names.  He  usually  speaks  of  it 
as  his  dream  or  sleep,  and  says,  "  It  came  to  me  in 
my  sleep,"  or  "  A  spirit  told  me  in  my  sleep,"  and  the 
Blackfoot  when  he  prays  says,  "  Listen,  my  dream." 
The  so-called  "  medicine  "  or  bundle  of  sacred  things, 
which  many  Indians  always  carry  with  them  is  called 
by  the  same  name.  The  owner  believes  these  things 
to  have  been  given  him,  or  that  he  has  been  directed 
to  make  them  by  his  dream,  and  such  articles,  while 
he  has  them  about  his  person,  protect  him  from  harm. 
A  friend  to  whom  I  was  once  of  service  afterward  gave 
me  his  dream.  He  told  me  that  he  had  carried  it  in 
battle  for  many  years,  and  that  it  had  always  kept  him 
safe.  It  was  a  necklace  of  bear  claws  and  spherical 
leaden  bullets,  and  was  perhaps  the  most  highly  valued 
of  all  his  possessions.  Whirlwind,  the  chief  of  the 
Cheyennes,  used  to  tell  of  the  power  of  his  dream — a 
little  hawk  which  he  wore  on  his  war  bonnet — which 
had  always  protected  him  in  battle,  and  especially  in 
one  fight,  when,  during  a  charge  on  his  enemies,  who 
were  fighting  behind  cover,  the  bullets  flew  so  thick 
about  him  that  every  feather  on  his  bonnet  was  cut 
away,  yet  no  ball  touched  him,  nor  was  the  hawk  hit. 

Instances  where  men  have  been  struck  and  knocked 
down  by  balls,  which  yet,  on  account  of  the  power  of 
this  protection,  did  not  enter  the  flesh  or  inflict  a 
wound,  are  commonly  spoken  of. 

It  is  impossible  to  state  definitely  just  how  these 
different  powers  are  regarded — whether  it  is  an  actual 
worship  that  is  offered  to  them ;  whether,  as  has  been 


'THE  OLD  FAITH  AND  THE  NEW.  210 

said,  "  All  nature  is  alive  with  gods ;  every  mountain, 
every  tree  is  worshipped,  and  the  commonest  animals 
are  objects  of  adoration  " ;  or  whether  one  supreme  god 
is  adored  through  these  various  objects  and  creatures 
which  typify  that  god's  various  attributes.  Even  the 
Indian  himself  does  not  know  just  which  of  these  is 
true.  Probably  the  average  red  man  actually  worships 
each  such  object.  At  least  it  is  certain  that  every  ob 
ject  in  Nature  may  have  its  special  property  or  power 
which  is  to  be  reverenced,  and  perhaps  propitiated. 
Such  objects  are  probably  types,  an  animal,  or  plant, 
or  butte,  standing  for  a  quality,  and  being  reverenced 
as  the  material  embodiment  of  that  quality.  If,  for 
example,  the  eagle  typifies  courage  and  dash  in  war, 
young  men  about  to  go  on  the  warpath  offer  prayers 
and  sacrifices  to  the  eagle,  asking  him  to  give  them 
some  of  his  bravery.  Yet  such  prayer  is  not  offered  to 
any  actual  bird  but  to  some  representative  eagle — per 
haps  a  spiritual  one — which  stands  for  bravery ;  for 
while  many  animals  stand  for  qualities  or  special  pow 
ers,  the  actual  animals  are  in  no  sense  sacred.  Some 
tribes  teach  kindness  and  consideration  to  all  living 
things,  and  forbid  their  unnecessary  destruction ;  but 
even  these  tribes  do  not  regard  any  animals  as  sacred 
in  the  sense  that  they  are  not  to  be  killed  when  it 
is  necessary.  The  animals  representing  these  quali 
ties  have  special  powers,  they  are  supernatural,  they 
are  nearer  the  Deity  than  men,  yet  they  are  his  serv 
ants.  Whatever  powers  they  may  possess  are  not  cre 
ated  by  themselves  nor  in  any  sense  inherent  in  them, 
but  have  been  given  to  them  by  the  Ruler,  and  are  ex 
ercised  only  by  his  permission. 

The  coming  of  the  white  man  has  brought  to  the 
Indian — even  to  him  who  has  not  been  exposed  to  the 


220  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

teaching  of  the  missionaries — more  or  less  of  skepti 
cism  as  to  his  own  religion.  He  believes  that  all  good 
gifts,  whether  mental  or  material,  come  from  the  su 
preme  power,  and  he  sees  that  the  white  man  has  a 
monopoly  of  such  gifts.  Hence,  in  many  cases,  he  has 
come  to  think  that  the  white  man's  god  is  rich  and 
wise,  while  the  Indian's  is  poor  and  foolish.  The  one 
taught  his  children  well,  and  gave  them  guns,  machin 
ery,  and  money,  the  power  to  talk  to  each  other  at  a 
distance,  the  wisdom  to  know  beforehand  what  to  do 
in  certain  circumstances,  and  great  shrewdness  in  all 
the  affairs  of  life.  The  other  furnished  to  his  children 
only  their  simple  arms  and  utensils  and  the  buffalo  for 
their  food.  These  things  satisfied  the  Indian  so  long 
as  he  knew  of  nothing  better,  but  now  that  he  is  wiser, 
he  cannot  but  feel  more  or  less  contempt  for  a  god 
who  could  do  no  more  for  his  children  than  this,  and 
he  does  not  hesitate  to  express  the  contempt  which  he 
feels. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  does  not  make  him  more 
ready  for  conversion  to  a  belief  in  the  white  man's  re 
ligion.  This  religion  offers  to  him  a  set  of  ideas  entirely 
new  and  entirely  different  in  character  from  any  that 
he  has  ever  had  before,  and  he  cannot  at  first  com 
prehend  them  at  all.  An  Indian  friend,  who  had 
listened  long  to  the  arguments  of  a  Christian  mission 
ary,  spoke  to  me  with  severe  scorn  of  the  foolishness 
of  the  latter's  promises  of  heaven  and  threats  of  hell. 
"How  is  it  possible  for  me  to  go  up  into  the  sky?" 
he  said.  "  Have  I  wings  like  an  eagle  to  fly  away  ? 
Or  how  can  I  get  to  that  place  down  below  ?  I  have 
no  claws  like  a  badger  to  dig  down  through  the 
ground." 

The  Indians,  as  has  often  been  pointed  out,  are  es- 


THE  OLD  FAITH  AND  THE   NEW.  221 

sentlally  a  religious  people.  They  realize  man's  feeble 
ness,  his  inability  to  successfully  contend  with  the 
powers  of  Nature,  and  so  they  ask  for  the  assistance  of 
all  those  beings  whom  they  believe  to  have  powers 
greater  than  themselves.  The  sacrifices  with  which 
they  accompany  their  prayers  may  vary  from  a  spoon 
ful  of  food  or  a  bit  of  calico  to  a  scalp  taken  in  war, 
a  horse,  or  a  piece  of  flesh  cut  from  the  body.  An  ac 
quaintance  of  mine,  who  had  lost  three  fingers  from 
his  left  hand  and  two  from  his  right,  told  me  that  at 
different  times  in  the  course  of  seven  years  he  had 
sacrificed  these  missing  members  in  the  furtherance  of 
a  special  object,  which  he  at  last  attained.  In  one  of 
the  Pawnee  stories  which  I  have  recorded  *  a  father  is 
related  to  have  sacrificed  his  only  son,  whom  he  dearly 
loved,  in  the  belief  that  this  act  would  secure  divine 
favour. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  many  cases  the  In 
dian  religion  of  to-day  has  been  greatly  influenced  by 
the  teachings  of  Christian  missionaries,  and  this  seems 
to  be  true  of  Pacific  coast  tribes  to  a  much  greater 
degree  than  of  those  dwelling  on  the  plains.  More 
than  once,  when  camping  with  Indians  whose  home  lay 
on  the  west  side  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  I  have  been 
impressed  by  the  survival  of  evidences  of  Christian 
teachings  among  people  who  have  apparently  forgot 
ten  those  teachings,  even  though  some  of  their  forms 
still  persist.  And  when  one  sees  a  wild  Indian — one 
whom  he  knows  to  be  a  thorough  pagan — make  the 
sign  of  the  cross  before  he  prays,  one  cannot  but 
wonder  whence  came  this  man's  knowledge  of  God, 
who  told  him  the  story  of  the  cross. 

*  Pawnee  Hero  Stories  and  Folk-Tales,  p.  161. 


222  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

Such  a  sight  carries  the  mind  back  over  the  cen 
turies,  and  makes  real  to  the  observer  the  extent  and 
the  permanence  of  the  devoted  work  done  here  in 
America  by  the  black-robed  priests  who  marched  with 
the  little  steel-clad  army  of  the  Conquistadores  when, 
with  all  the  pomp  and  circumstance  of  glorious  war, 
they  entered  Mexico.  At  first  these  fathers  made 
their  converts  by  the  sword.  Later  their  unflagging 
zeal  and  patient  faith  subdued  tribe  after  tribe,  until 
at  length  they  reached  the  western  ocean.  Slowly 
they  spread  along  the  coast,  north  and  south,  and  to 
the  outlying  islands  of  the  sea,  and  planted  the  cross 
deeper  and  deeper  in  the  wilderness.  In  trackless 
deserts,  in  tangled  forests  they  preached  Christ  and 
his  kingdom.  The  wild  tribes  of  the  parched  cactus 
plains,  the  gentle  races  of  the  Pueblo  villages,  the 
hardy  fishermen  of  the  seashore  alike  yielded  to  the 
faith  and  energy  which  inspired  these  ministers  of 
God.  Little  by  little  they  made  their  way  up  the 
coast — you  can  trace  their  progress  on  the  map  to 
day — San  Diego,  San  Pedro,  San  Luis,  San  Jose,  San 
Francisco,  San  Juan — ever  fighting  the  battle  of  the 
cross,  upheld  by  their  faith.  The  blazing  sun  of  sum 
mer  poured  down  upon  them  his  withering  heat ;  they 
did  not  blench.  The  frosts  and  snows  of  winter 
chilled  them  ;  they  pushed  on.  Sky-reaching  moun 
tains  barred  their  progress;  they  surmounted  them. 
Floods  stood  in  their  way  ;  they  crossed  them.  Pain 
fully,  slowly,  on  foot  through  an  unknown  country, 
in  perils  of  waters,  in  perils  by  the  heathen,  in  perils 
in  the  wilderness,  "  in  weariness  and  painfulness,  in 
watchings  often,  in  hunger  and  thirst,  in  fastings 
often,  in  cold  and  nakedness,"  they  held  their  stead 
fast  way.  No  danger  daunted  them,  no  difficulty 


THE  OLD  FAITH  AND  THE  NEW.  223 

turned  them  back.  Death  did  not  stop  their  march. 
If  one  faltered  and  stumbled  and  fell,  another  stepped 
calmly  forward  and  took  his  place.  No  need  now  to 
look  at  the  means  they  sometimes  employed,  nor  to 
remember  that  among  these  servants  of  God  all  were 
not  alike  worthy.  Look  only  at  what  they  accom 
plished,  and  remember  at  what  a  cost.  And  though 
their  earnest  labours  failed  to  establish  here  in  the  new 
world  the  religious  empire  of  which  they  dreamed,  yet 
no  doubt  each  faithful  soul  had,  in  the  consciousness 
of  duty  well  performed,  his  own  abundant  reward. 
And  although  of  their  teachings  in  many  tribes  much 
or  all  has  been  forgotten,  still,  even  now  in  wild  camps 
in  the  distant  mountains,  the  sign  of  the  cross  and 
the  vesper  bell  may  remind  the  wanderer  of  a  time, 
now  long  past,  when  faith  was  strong  and  men  were 
willing  to  die  for  God's  glory.  There,  in  such  lonely 
camps  among  rugged  peaks  and  far  from  the  haunts 
of  men,  is  still  practiced  a  rite  of  the  Church.  There 
still  grows,  though  stunted,  deformed,  and  changed, 
the  plant  whose  seed  was  first  sown  centuries  ago  by 
that  devoted  band. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   COMING   OF  THE   WHITE   MAN". 

KNOWLEDGE  of  the  white  man  came  to  the  differ 
ent  tribes  of  the  west  at  different  times,  but  a  cen 
tury  ago  most  of  them  knew  little  of  him,  and  there 
are  many  tribes  which  have  had  a  real  intercourse 
with  the  whites  for  a  still  shorter  time.  Long  before 
this  the  Spaniards  in  the  southwest  and  011  the  Pacific 
coast  had  made  their  presence  felt,  but  the  Indians 
usually  do  not  consider  that  Spaniards  are  of  the  same 
race  with  the  people  of  European  origin  who  came  to 
them  from  the  east,  and  often  they  have  a  special 
name  for  them. 

Even  after  the  Indians  had  learned  of  the  existence 
of  white  people,  they  did  not  at  once  come  into  con 
tact  with  them.  It  was  often  quite  a  long  time  before 
they  even  began  to  trade  with  them,  and  when  they 
did  so,  it  was  in  a  very  small  way.  The  first  articles 
traded  for  were  arms,  beads,  blankets,  and  the  gaudy 
finery  that  the  savage  loves.  Horses — which  trans 
formed  the  Indian,  which  changed  him  from  a  mild 
and  peaceful  seeker  after  food  to  a  warrior  and  a 
raider — were  by  many  tribes  first  obtained  not  directly 
from  the  whites,  but  by  barter  from  those  of  their 
own  race. 

Most  tribes  still  preserve  traditions  of  the  time 
when  they  met  the  first  white  men,  as  well  as  of  the 

224 


THK  COMING   OF  THE  WHITE  MAN.         225 

time  when  they  first  saw  horses ;  but  in  many  cases 
this  was  so  long  ago  that  all  details  of  the  occurrence 
have  been  lost.  It  is  certain  that  the  Spaniards  and 
their  horses  had  worked  their  way  up  the  Pacific 
slope  into  Oregon  and  Washington  long  before  there 
was  any  considerable  influx  of  white  trappers  into  the 
plains  country  and  the  Rocky  Mountains ;  and  that  of 
the  western  tribes,  those  which  in  miles  were  furthest 
from  Mexico  were  the  last  to  learn  of  the  whites  and 
their  wonderful  powers.  One  of  these  peoples  was 
the  Blackfeet,  of  whom  I  have  been  told  by  men  still 
living  in  the  tribe  that  fifty  years  ago  no  Blackfoot 
could  count  up  to  ten,  and  that  a  little  earlier  the 
number  of  horses  in  all  three  tribes  of  that  confedera 
tion  was  very  small.  Then  they  had  but  few  guns, 
and  many  of  them  even  used  still  the  stone  arrowheads 
and  hatchets  and  the  bone  knives  of  their  primitive 
ancestors. 

A  people  whose  intercourse  with  the  whites  has 
been  so  short  and,  until  recent  times,  so  limited,  ought 
to  retain  some  detailed  account  of  their  earliest  meet 
ing  with  civilized  men,  and  such  a  tradition  has  come 
to  me  from  John  Monroe,  a  half-breed  Piegan,  now 
nearly  seventy  years  old.  It  tells  of  the  first  time  the 
Blackfeet  saw  white  people — a  party  of  traders  from 
the  east,  either  Frenchmen  from  Montreal,  or  one  of 
the  very  earliest  parties  of  Hudson  Bay  men  which 
ascended  the  Saskatchewan  River.  John  Monroe  first 
heard  the  narrative  when  a  boy  from  a  Blood  Indian 
named  Sutane,  who  was  then  an  old  man,  and  Su- 
tane's  grandfather  was  one  of  the  party  who  met  the 
white  people.  The  occurrence  probably  took  place 
during  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

When  this  people  lived  in  the  north,  a  party  of  the 


226  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

Blackfeet  started  out  to  war.  They  travelled  on,  al 
ways  going  southward,  until  they  came  to  a  big  water. 
While  passing  through  a  belt  of  timber  on  the  north 
bank  of  this  river,  they  came  upon  what  they  took  for 
strange  beaver  work,  where  these  animals  had  been 
cutting  down  the  trees.  But  on  looking  closely  at 
the  cuttings,  they  saw  that  the  chips  were  so  large 
that  it  must  have  been  an  animal  much  bigger  than  a 
beaver  that  could  open  its  mouth  wide  enough  to  cut 
such  chips.  They  did  not  understand  what  this  could 
be,  for  none  of  them  had  ever  seen  anything  like  it 
before.  Each  man  expressed  his  mind  about  this, 
and  at  last  they  concluded  that  some  great  under- water 
animal  must  have  done  it.  At  one  place  they  saw 
that  the  trunk  of  a  tree  was  missing,  and  found  the 
trail  over  the  ground  where  it  had  been  dragged  away 
from  the  stump.  They  followed  this  trail,  so  as  to 
see  where  the  animals  had  taken  the  log,  and  what 
they  had  done  with  it,  and  as  they  went  on,  they 
found  many  other  small  trails  like  this  one,  all  leading 
into  one  larger  main  trail.  They  then  saw  the  foot 
prints  of  persons,  but  they  were  prints  of  a  foot 
shaped  differently  from  theirs.  There  was  a  deep 
mark  at  the  heel ;  the  tracks  were  not  flat  like  those 
made  by  people.* 

They  followed  the  trail,  which  kept  getting  larger 
and  wider  as  it  went.  Every  little  while,  another  trail 
joined  it.  When  they  came  to  where  they  could  look 
through  the  timber,  they  saw  before  them  a  little  open 
spot  on  the  bank  of  the  river.  They  looked  through 
the  underbrush,  and  saw  what  they  at  first  thought 

*  This  deep  mark  was  no  doubt  the  imprint  of  the  heel  of  a 
shoe. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  WHITS  MAN.        227 

were  bears,  and  afterward  took  to  be  persons,  lifting 
logs  and  putting  them  up  in  a  large  pile.  They  crept 
closer,  to  where  they  could  see  better,  and  then  con 
cluded  that  these  were  not  people.  They  were  very 
woolly  on  the  face.  Long  masses  of  hair  hung  down 
from  their  chins.  They  were  not  clothed — wore  no 
robes.  The  Blackfeet  said  :  "  Why,  they  have  nothing 
on  !  They  are  naked  ! "  Some  of  them  said,  "  Those 
are  Suye  tuppi  "  (water  people).  They  stole  around 
to  another  point  of  the  timber,  still  nearer,  where  they 
could  see  better.  There  they  came  close  to  one  of 
these  people  alone.  He  was  gathering  sticks  and  put 
ting  them  in  a  pile.  They  saw  that  the  skin  of  his 
hands  and  face  was  white.  This  one  had  no  hair  on 
his  face.*  So  they  said :  "  Well,  this  must  be  a  she 
water  animal.  The  he  ones  have  hair  on  the  face, 
and  the  she  ones  do  not." 

The  oldest  man  of  the  party  then  said :  "  We  had 
better  go  away.  Maybe  they  will  smell  us  or  feel  us 
here,  and  perhaps  they  will  kill  us,  or  do  something 
fearful  Let  us  go."  So  they  went  away. 

When  they  got  back  to  their  camp,  they  told  what 
they  had  seen ;  that  to  the  south  they  had  found  ani 
mals  that  were  very  much  like  people — water  animals. 
They  said  that  these  animals  were  naked.  That  some 
of  them  had  red  bodies, f  and  some  were  black  all  over, 
except  a  red  mark  around  the  bodies  and  a  fine  red 
tail.  I  Moreover,  these  people  wore  no  robes  or  leg 
gings  and  no  breech-clouts. 

*  This  was  probably  a  boy  gathering  poles  for  roofing. 

f  Wore  red  shirts. 

\  The  old  Hudson  Bay  men  used  to  wear  about  the  waist  a 
red  sash  the  ends  of  which  hung  down  in  front.  When  they 
were  working,  to  get  these  ends  out  of  the  way,  they  would  pass 
16 


228  THE  STOftY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

This  description  caused  a  great  excitement  in  the 
camp.  Some  thought  that  the  strange  beings  were 
water  animals,  and  others  that  they  were  a  new  peo 
ple.  All  the  men  of  the  camp  started  south  to  see 
what  this  could  be.  Before  they  left  the  camp,  the 
head  man  told  them  to  be  very  careful  in  dealing  with 
the  animals,  not  to  interfere  with  them  nor  to  get  in 
their  way,  and  not  to  try  to  hurt  them  nor  to  anger 
them. 

The  party  started,  and  when  they  reached  the 
opening,  the  animals  were  still  there  at  work.  After 
they  had  watched  them  for  some  time  the  head  man 
of  the  party  said  to  the  others :  "  All  you  stay  here, 
and  I  will  go  down  to  them  alone.  If  they  do  nothing 
to  me  you  wait  here,  but  if  they  attack  or  hurt  me, 
you  rush  on  them,  and  we  will  fight  hard,  and  try  not 
to  let  them  capture  any  of  us."  The  man  started,  and 
when  he  came  close  to  the  corner  of  the  houses  he 
stood  still.  One  of  the  men,  who  was  working  near 
by,  walked  up  to  him,  looked  him  straight  in  the  face, 
and  stretched  out  his  arm.  The  Indian  looked  at  him, 
and  did  not  know  what  he  wanted.  Some  more  of 
the  men  came  up  to  him,  and  the  Indian  saw  that  all 
of  them  were  persons  like  himself,  except  that  they 
were  of  a  different  colour  and  had  a  different  voice. 
The  hair  on  their  faces  was  fair. 

When  the  other  Indians  saw  that  no  harm  had 
been  done  to  their  leader,  some  of  them  went  down  to 
him,  one  by  one,  and  by  twos  and  threes,  but  most  of 
the  party  remained  hidden  in  the  timber.  They  were 
still  afraid  of  these  strange  new  beings. 


them  around  the  body  and  under  the  sash,  so  that  they  hung 
down  behind. 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  WHITE  MAN.        229 

The  whites  spoke  to  them,  and  asked  them  to 
come  into  the  house,  making  motions  to  them,  but  the 
Indians  did  not  understand  what  was  meant  by  these 
signs.  The  whites  would  walk  away,  and  then  come 
back  and  take  hold  of  the  Indians'  robes  and  pull 
them.  At  last  some  of  the  Blackfeet  followed  the 
white  men  into  the  house.  Those  who  had  gone  in 
came  back  and  told  the  others  strange  stories  of  the 
wonderful  things  they  had  seen  in  this  house.  As 
they  gained  confidence,  many  others  went  in,  while 
still  others  would  not  go  in,  nor  would  they  go  close 
to  the  new  people. 

The  whites  showed  them  a  long  and  curious-look 
ing  piece  of  wood.  They  did  not  know  of  what  kind 
of  stone  one  part  of  it  was  made.  It  was  hard  and 
black.  The  white  man  took  down  from  the  wall  a 
white  cow's  horn  and  poured  out  some  black  sand  into 
his  hand,  and  poured  it  down  into  a  hole  in  this  long 
stick.  Then  he  took  a  little  bunch  of  grass  and  pushed 
this  into  the  hole  with  another  stick,  then  measured 
with  his  fingers  the  length  of  the  stick  left  out  of  the 
hole.  Then  he  took  a  round  thing  out  of  a  bag,  and 
put  it  into  the  hole,  and  put  down  some  more  fine 
grass.  Then  he  poured  out  some  more  of  the  black  sand 
into  the  side  of  the  stick.  The  Indians  stood  around, 
taking  great  interest  in  the  way  the  man  was  hand 
ling  this  stick.  The  white  man  now  began  to  make 
all  kinds  of  signs  to  the  Indians,  which  they  did  not 
understand.  Sometimes  he  would  make  a  big  sound 
with  his  mouth,  and  then  point  to  the  stick.  He 
would  put  the  stick  to  his  shoulder,  holding  it  out  in 
front  of  him,  and  make  a  great  many  motions.  Then 
he  gave  it  to  one  of  the  Indians.  He  showed  him  the 
under  parts,  and  put  his  finger  there.  The  Indian 


230  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

touched  the  under  part  and  the  stick  went  off  in  the 
air  and  made  a  thundering  sound,  a  terrible  crash. 
The  Indian  staggered  back,  and  the  others  were  very 
much  scared.  Some  dropped  to  the  ground,  while  all 
the  whites  laughed  and  shook  their  heads  at  them. 
All  laughed,  and  made  many  signs  to  the  Blackfeet, 
none  of  which  they  understood.  The  white  man  took 
down  the  horn  of  black  sand,  and  again  did  these 
things  to  the  stick,  but  this  time  the  Indians  all  stood 
back.  They  were  afraid.  When  he  had  finished  the 
motions,  the  white  man  invited  them  out  of  doors. 
Then  he  sat  down,  and  took  aim  at  a  log  lying  on  the 
ground.  The  same  great  thunder  sounded.  He 
walked  up  to  the  log,  showed  the  bullet  hole,  and 
pushed  a  little  stick  into  it ;  then  he  loaded  the  gun 
again. 

By  this  time  the  Indians  were  beginning  to  under 
stand  the  power  of  the  stick.  After  the  white  man 
had  loaded  it,  he  handed  the  gun  to  the  Indian,  took 
him  close  to  the  log,  showed  him  how  to  aim  the  gun 
and  how  to  pull  the  trigger.  The  Indian  fired  and  hit 
the  log. 

The  white  men  showed  these  Blackfeet  their  knives, 
whittling  sticks  with  them,  and  showing  them  how 
well  they  could  cut.  The  Indians  were  very  much  de 
lighted  with  the  power  of  these  knives.  Then  they 
saw  a  big,  woolly  white  man  standing  out  in  front  of 
the  house,  and  he  with  his  axe  would  cut  a  big  log  in 
two  in  only  a  short  time.  All  these  things  were  very 
strange  to  them.  The  white  men  looked  closely  at  the 
Blackfoot  war  dresses  and  arms  and  wanted  them, 
and  gave  their  visitors  some  knives  and  copper  cups 
for  their  dresses  and  the  skins  that  they  wore.  The 
visitors  stayed  with  the  white  men  some  days,  camping 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  WHITE  MAN.        231 

near  by.  They  kept  wondering  at  these  people,  at  how 
they  looked,  the  things  which  they  had,  and  what  they 
did.  The  white  men  kept  making  signs  to  them,  but 
they  understood  nothing  of  it  all. 

After  a  time  the  Blackfeet  returned  to  their  camp. 
Afterward,  many  others  visited  the  whites,  and  this 
was  the  beginning  of  a  friendly  intercourse  between 
the  two  peoples.  After  a  time  they  came  to  under 
stand  each  other  a  little,  and  trade  relations  were 
opened.  The  Indians  learned  that  they  could  get  the 
white  man's  things  in  exchange  for  the  skins  of  small 
animals,  and  they  began  to  trade  and  to  get  guns.  It 
was  when  they  got  these  arms  that  they  first  began  to 
take  courage,  and  to  go  out  of  the  timber  on  to  the 
prairie  toward  the  mountains.  In  those  old  days  the 
Hudson  Bay  traders  used  to  tell  the  Indians  to  bring 
in  the  hair  from  the  skins  of  buffalo,  to  put  it  in 
sacks  and  bring  it  in  to  trade.  They  did  so,  but  all 
of  a  sudden  the  traders  would  take  no  more  buffalo 
hair. 

This  probably  refers  to  the  attempt  made  during 
the  last  century  in  the  Selkirk  settlement  to  establish 
a  corporation  for  making  cloth  from  buffalo  hair. 

Of  the  special  articles  brought  by  the  white  men, 
the  first  to  exercise  an  important  influence  on  the 
people  were  horses.  The  possession  of  these  animals 
greatly  increased  their  liberty,  stimulated  them  to 
wars  with  their  neighbours,  and  in  fact  wrought  a 
most  important  change  in  the  character  of  the  peo 
ple.*  The  knowledge  of  the  horse  advanced  from  the 
south  northward,  and  these  animals  spread  northward 

*  Blackfoot  Lodge  Tales,  p.  242. 


232  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

up  the  Pacific  coast  more  rapidly  than  on  the  east  side 
of  the  mountains.  The  tribes  of  the  southern  plains — 
Comanches,  Kiowas,  Wichitas,  Arapahoes,  Navajoes, 
and  others — obtained  horses  very  early.  The  Pawnees 
and  various  tribes  of  the  Dakotas  later.  The  Utes, 
Snakes,  and  Kutenais  had  horses  early ;  and  the  last 
of  the  plains  tribe  to  obtain  them  were  the  Blackfeet, 
Assiniboines,  and  Plains  Crees.  In  the  case  of  tribes 
that  have  long  had  horses,  it  is  impossible  to  even  ap 
proximate  the  date  at  which  they  were  obtained — it 
happened  too  long  ago — but  with  the  more  northern 
tribes,  which  have  had  horses  for  a  short  time  only,  I 
have  been  more  successful  in  my  inquiries,  and  from 
several  old  men  among  the  Piegans  I  have  accounts 
of  the  first  coming  of  horses. 

As  I  have  said,  many  myths  exist  to  account  for 
the  coming  of  the  horse,  but  this  Piegan  testimony  is 
that  of  an  eye-witness.  Wolf  Calf  is  probably  over 
one  hundred  years  old.  He  well  remembers  when  the 
first  white  men  passed  through  the  country,  and  old 
men  of  seventy  years  or  thereabouts  tell  me  that  he 
was  a  proved  warrior  when  they  were  little  boys.  He 
believes  that  he  was  born  in  1793.  From  him  I  have 
definite  and  detailed  accounts  of  the  ways  of  the  Pie 
gans  in  days  before  they  had  been  at  all  influenced 
by  civilized  man.  I  believe  his  statements  to  be  as 
worthy  of  credence  as  any  can  be  which  depend  solely 
on  memory.  The  account  which  follows  is  a  transla 
tion  of  his  narrative,  taken  down  from  his  own  lips 
some  years  ago.  He  said  : 

"  Long  ago,  when  I  was  young,  just  getting  big 
enough  to  use  a  bow,  we  used  arrowpoints  of  stone. 
Then  the  knives  were  made  of  flint.  Not  long  after 
this,  arrowpoints  of  sheet  iron  began  to  come  into  use. 


THE  COMING  OP  THE  WHITE   MAN.         233 

After  we  used  the  stone  knives,  we  began  to  get  white 
men's  knives.  The  first  of  these  that  we  had  were 
made  of  a  strip  of  tin.  This  was  set  into  a  bone,  so 
that  only  a  narrow  edge  of  the  tin  protruded,  and  this 
was  sharpened  and  used  for  skinning. 

"  Before  that  time  the  Piegans  had  no  horses. 
When  they  moved  their  camp  they  packed  their  lodges 
on  dogs. 

"  The  first  horses  we  ever  saw  came  from  west  of 
the  mountains.  A  band  of  the  Piegans  were  camped 
on  Belly  River,  at  a  place  that  we  call  '  Smash  the 
Heads,'  where  we  jumped  buffalo.  They  had  been 
driving  buffalo  over  the  cliff  here,  so  that  they  had 
plenty  of  meat. 

"  There  had  come  over  the  mountains  to  hunt  buf 
falo  a  Kutenai  who  had  some  horses,  and  he  was  run 
ning  buffalo ;  but  for  some  reason  he  had  no  luck. 
He  could  kill  nothing.  He  had  seen  from  far  off  the 
Piegan  camp,  but  he  did  not  go  near  it,  for  the  Piegans 
and  the  Kutenais  were  enemies. 

"  This  Kutenai  could  not  kill  anything,  and  he 
and  his  family  had  nothing  to  eat  and  were  starving. 
At  last  he  made  up  his  mind  that  he  would  go  into 
the  camp  of  his  enemies  and  give  himself  up,  for  he 
said,  '  I  might  as  well  be  killed  at  once  as  die  of  hun 
ger.'  So  with  his  wife  and  children  he  rode  away 
from  his  camp  up  in  the  mountains,  leaving  his  lodge 
standing  and  his  horses  feeding  about  it,  all  except 
those  which  his  woman  and  his  three  children  were 
riding,  and  started  for  the  camp  of  the  Piegans. 

"  They  had  just  made  a  big  drive,  and  had  run  a 
great  lot  of  buffalo  over  the  cliff.  There  were  many 
dead  in  the  piskun,  and  the  men  were  killing  those 
that  were  left  alive,  when  suddenly  the  Kutenai,  on 


234  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

his  horse,  followed  by  his  wife  and  children  on  theirs, 
rode  over  a  hill  near  by.  When  they  saw  him,  all  the 
Piegans  were  astonished  and  wondered  what  this  could 
be.  None  of  them  had  ever  seen  anything  like  it,  and 
they  were  afraid.  They  thought  it  was  something 
mysterious.  The  chief  of  the  Piegans  called  out  to 
his  people  :  '  This  is  something  very  strange.  I  have 
heard  of  wonderful  things  that  have  happened  from 
the  earliest  times  until  now,  but  I  never  heard  of  any 
thing  like  this.  This  thing  must  have  come  from 
above  (i.  e.,  from  the  sun),  or  else  it  must  have  come 
out  of  the  hill  (i.  e.,  from  the  earth).  Do  not  do  any 
thing  to  it ;  be  still  and  wait.  If  we  try  to  hurt  it, 
may  be  it  will  ride  into  that  hill  again,  or  may  be  some 
thing  bad  will  happen.  Let  us  wait.' 

"  As  it  drew  nearer,  they  could  see  that  it  was  a  man 
coming,  and  that  he  was  on  some  strange  animal.  The 
Piegans  wanted  their  chief  to  go  toward  him  and  speak 
to  him.  The  chief  did  not  wish  to  do  this ;  he  was 
afraid ;  but  at  last  he  started  to  go  to  meet  the  Kute- 
nai,  who  was  coming.  When  he  got  near  to  him,  the 
Kutenai  made  signs  that  he  was  friendly,  and  patted 
his  horse  on  his  neck  and  made  signs  to  the  chief.  '  I 
give  you  this  animal.'  The  chief  made  signs  that  he 
was  friendly,  and  the  Kutenais  rode  into  the  camp 
and  were  received  as  friends,  and  food  was  given 
them  and  they  ate,  and  their  hunger  was  satisfied. 

"  The  Kutenai  stayed  with  these  Piegans  for  some 
time,  and  the  Kutenai  man  told  the  chief  that  he  had 
more  horses  at  his  camp  up  in  the  mountains,  and  that 
beyond  the  mountains  there  were  plenty  of  horses. 
The  Piegan  said,  1 1  have  never  heard  of  a  man  riding 
an  animal  like  this.'  He  asked  the  Kutenai  to  bring 
in  the  rest  of  his  horses ;  and  one  night  he  started  out, 


THE  COMING  OP  THE  WHITE  MAN.         235 

and  the  next  day  came  back  driving  all  his  horses  be 
fore  him,  and  they  came  to  the  camp,  and  all  the  peo 
ple  saw  them  and  looked  at  them  and  wondered. 

"  Some  time  after  this  the  Kutenai  said  to  the  Pie- 
gan  chief :  c  My  friend,  why  not  come  across  the  moun 
tains  to  my  country  and  visit  me  ?  I  should  like  to 
have  you  see  my  country.  Bring  with  you  those  of 
your  people  who  wish  to  come.  My  people  will  give 
you  many  horses.' 

"  Then  the  Piegan  chief  said :  '  It  is  good.  I  will 
go  with  you  and  visit  you.'  He  told  his  people  that 
he  was  going  with  this  Kutenai,  and  that  any  of  them 
who  wished  to  do  so  might  go  with  him.  Many  of  the 
Piegans  packed  their  dogs  with  their  lodges  and  with 
dried  meat  and  started  with  the  Kutenai,  and  those 
who  had  no  dogs  packed  dried  meat  in  their  parfleches 
and  carried  it  on  their  backs. 

"  In  those  days  the  Piegans  did  not  take  women  to 
sit  beside  them  until  they  were  near  middle  life — about 
thirty-five  or  forty  years  old ;  but  among  those  who 
went  across  the  mountains  was  a  young  man  less  than 
thirty  years  old,  who  had  taken  a  wife.  Many  of  the 
people  did  not  like  this,  and  some  made  fun  of  him 
because  he  had  taken  a  wife  so  young. 

"  The  party  had  not  travelled  many  days  when  they 
got  across  the  mountains,  and  near  to  where  the  Ku 
tenai  camp  was.  When  they  had  come  near  it,  the 
Kutenai  man  went  on  ahead,  and  when  he  had  reached 
his  village,  he  told  the  chief  that  he  had  with  him  vis 
itors,  Piegans  who  lived  on  the  prairie,  and  that  they 
had  no  horses,  but  had  plenty  of  buffalo  meat.  The 
Kutenai  chief  told  the  man  to  bring  these  Piegans 
into  the  camp.  He  did  so,  and  they  were  well  re 
ceived  and  were  given  presents  of  horses,  and  they 


236  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

traded  their  buffalo  meat  for  more  horses.  The  young 
man  with  the  wife  had  four  parfleches  of  dried  meat, 
and  for  each  one  of  these  he  received  a  horse,  and  all 
four  were  mares. 

"  The  Piegans  stayed  with  the  Kutenais  a  long 
time,  but  at  length  they  returned  over  the  mountains 
to  their  own  country,  taking  their  horses  with  them. 
When  the  other  bands  of  the  Piegans  saw  these  horses 
and  heard  what  had  happened,  they  began  to  make 
peace  with  the  Kutenais,  and  to  trade  with  them  for 
more  horses.  The  young  man  who  had  a  wife  kept 
the  four  mares,  and  took  them  about  with  him  wher 
ever  he  went.  He  said  to  his  wife :  "  We  will  not  give 
away  any  of  these  horses.  They  are  all  mares  and  all 
young.  They  will  breed  and  soon  we  will  have  more.' 
The  mares  bred,  and  the  young  man,  as  he  grew  older, 
proved  to  be  a  good  warrior.  He  began  to  go  to  war 
against  the  Snakes,  and  to  take  horses  from  them,  and 
after  a  time  he  had  a  great  herd  of  horses. 

"  This  young  man,  though  once  everybody  had 
laughed  at  him,  finally  became  head  chief  of  the  Pie 
gans.  His  name  at  first  was  Dog,  and  afterward  Sits 
in  the  Middle,  and  at  last  Many  Horses.  He  had  so 
many  horses  he  could  not  keep  track  of  them  all. 
After  he  had  so  many  horses,  he  would  select  ten  boys 
out  of  each  band  of  the  Piegans  to  care  for  his  horses. 
Many  Horses  had  more  horses  than  all  the  rest  of  the 
tribe.  Many  Horses  died  a  good  many  years  ago. 
These  were  the  first  horses  the  Piegans  saw. 

"  When  they  first  got  horses  the  people  did  not 
know  what  they  fed  on.  They  would  offer  the  ani 
mals  pieces  of  dried  meat,  or  would  take  a  piece  of 
backfat  and  rub  their  noses  with  it,  to  try  to  get  them 
to  eat  it.  Then  the  horses  would  turn  away  and  put 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  WHITE  MAN.         237 

down  their  heads,  and  begin  to  eat  the  grass  of  the 
prairie." 

The  date  first  mentioned  by  Wolf  Calf  would  be 
— if  we  assume  his  age  to  be  given  correctly — about 
1804-1806,  or  when  he  was  from  ten  to  twelve  years 
of  age,  and  I  presume  that  their  first  horses  may  have 
come  into  the  hands  of  the  Blackfeet  about  that  time, 
or  in  the  very  earliest  years  of  the  present  century. 
This  would  agree  fairly  well  with  the  statement  of 
Mr.  Hugh  Monroe,  who  says  that  in  1813,  when  he  first 
came  among  this  people,  they  had  possessed  horses  for 
a  short  time  only,  and  had  recently  begun  to  make  war 
excursions  to  the  south  on  a  large  scale  for  the  purpose 
of  securing  more  horses  from  their  enemies.  Hugh 
Monroe's  wife,  who  was  born  about  1796-1798,  used 
to  say  that  when  she  was  a  little  girl  the  Piegans  had 
no  horses,  dogs  being  their  only  beasts  of  burden,  and 
all  the  evidence  that  I  can  gather  in  this  tribe  seems 
to  point  to  the  date  given  as  that  at  which  they  ob 
tained  their  first  horses.  We  know  that  the  chief 
Many  Horses  was  killed  in  the  great  battle  of  the  Cy 
press  Hills  in  the  autumn  of  1867,  and  he  is  always 
spoken  of  as  a  very  old  man  at  that  time. 

Wolf  Calf  also  gave  the  following  account  of  the 
first  visit  of  white  traders  to  a  Piegan  camp.  He  said  : 
"  White  people  had  begun  to  come  into  this  country, 
and  Many  Horses'  young  men  wanted  ropes  and  iron 
arrowpoints  and  saddle  blankets,  and  the  people  were 
beginning  to  kill  furs  and  skins  to  trade.  Many 
Horses  began  to  trade  with  his  own  people  for  these 
things.  He  would  ask  the  young  men  of  the  tribe  to 
kill  skins  for  him,  and  they  would  bring  them  to  him 
and  he  would  give  them  a  horse  or  two  in  exchange. 
Then  he  would  send  his  relations  in  to  the  Hudson 


238  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

Bay  post  to  trade,  but  he  would  never  go  himself.  The 
white  men  wanted  to  see  him,  and  sent  word  to  him 
to  come  in,  but  he  would  never  do  so. 

"  At  length,  one  winter,  these  white  men  packed 
their  dog  sledges  with  goods  and  started  to  see  Many 
Horses.  They  took  with  them  guns.  The  Piegans 
heard  that  the  whites  were  coming,  and  Many  Horses 
sent  word  to  all  the  people  to  come  together  and  meet 
him  at  a  certain  place,  where  the  whites  were  coming. 
When  these  came  to  the  camp,  they  asked  where  Many 
Horses'  lodge  was,  and  the  people  pointed  out  to  them 
the  Crow  painted  lodge.  The  whites  went  to  this 
lodge  and  began  to  unpack  their  things — guns,  cloth 
ing,  knives,  and  goods  of  all  kinds. 

"  Many  Horses  sent  two  men  to  go  in  different  di 
rections  through  the  camp  and  ask  all  the  principal 
men,  young  and  old,  to  come  together  to  his  lodge. 
They  all  came.  Some  went  in  and  some  sat  outside. 
Then  these  white  men  began  to  distribute  the  guns, 
and  with  each  gun  they  gave  a  bundle  of  powder  and 
ball.  At  this  same  time,  the  young  men  received  white 
blankets  and  the  old  men  black  coats.  Then  we  first 
got  knives,  and  the  white  men  showed  us  how  to  use 
knives  ;  to  split  down  the  legs  and  rip  up  the  belly — 
to  skin  for  trade.  There  were  not  knives  enough  for 
each  to  have  one,  and  it  was  then  that  knives  with  tin 
edges  were  made. 

"  The  whites  showed  us  many  things.  They  had 
flint,  steel,  and  punk,  and  showed  the  Indians  how  to 
use  them.  A  white  man  held  the  flint  and  struck  it 
with  the  steel  and  lighted  the  punk.  Then  he  gave 
them  to  an  Indian  and  told  him  to  do  the  same.  He 
did  so,  but  when  he  saw  the  spark  burning  the  tinder, 
he  was  frightened  and  dropped  it, 


THE   COMING   OF  THE  WHITE   MAN.         239 

"  Before  that,  fire  was  made  with  firesticks,  the 
twirling  stick,  being  made  of  greasewood,  was  hard, 
and  in  the  hollow  which  received  the  point,  finely 
powdered  dry  grass  was  put,  which  caught  the  fire. 
This  was  transferred  to  tinder  and  blown  into  a 
flame." 

As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  the  possession  of  guns 
and  horses  transformed  the  Blackfeet  from  a  more  or 
less  stationary  people  dwelling  in  the  timber,  and  de 
voting  all  their  energies  to  hunting  and  the  food  sup 
ply,  to  a  tribe  whose  chief  ambition  was  the  acquiring 
of  glory  and  riches  by  warlike  pursuits.  Now  they 
began  to  go  to  war,  and  in  a  few  years  they  had  con 
quered  from  their  enemies  on  the  south  a  great  terri 
tory,  and  had  begun  to  make  themselves  rich  in  horses. 
Inhabiting  a  country  abounding  in  buffalo,  it  was  easy 
for  them  to  procure  robes  to  supply  to  the  traders  who 
at  length  penetrated  their  country,  and  so  to  provide 
themselves  with  all  the  goods  that  the  white  men  of 
fered.  But  fast  in  the  wake  of  the  white  men  followed 
disease,  and  smallpox  and  measles  and  scarlet  fever 
breaking  out  in  their  camps,  swept  off  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  the  race.  The  white  men  learned  that 
Indians  liked  liquor  and  began  to  use  this  in  trade, 
and  liquor  killed  more  than  disease. 

Any  tribe  of  Indians  who  had  obtained  possessions 
of  any  sort  from  the  white  men  had  manifestly  a  tre 
mendous  advantage  over  any  other  tribe  who  still  had 
only  their  primitive  equipment,  and  we  are  told  by 
Cheyenne  tradition  that  that  brave  and  warlike  people 
during  their  migration  toward  the  southwest  were  ut 
terly  routed  and  put  to  flight  by  the  Assiniboines,  who 
had  recently  obtained  guns  from  the  white  traders. 

As  a  rule,  the  early  intercourse  between  Indians 


240  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

and  whites  in  the  west  was  friendly,  and  their  rela 
tions  pleasant.  Yet  among  the  more  warlike  tribes, 
stranger  and  enemy  were  synonymous  terms,  so  that 
the  horses  of  white  men  were  often  stolen.  Of  course, 
when  this  occurred,  efforts  were  made  to  kill  the  thieves, 
and  thus  active  war  was  very  often  brought  about.  A 
man  or  two  killed  on  either  side  would  for  some  time 
to  come  insure  reprisals  and  fighting  at  all  subsequent 
meetings  of  parties  of  whites  and  Indians  belonging 
to  the  tribe  engaged,  and  each  battle  would  make 
others  more  probable.  Sometimes  a  peace  would  be 
made  which  was  lasting,  and  there  are  some  tribes 
which  have  never  engaged  in  any  wars  with  the 
whites,  while  others,  in  the  face  of  shameful  injury 
and  ill  treatment,  have  always  been  their  faithful  allies 
in  their  wars  with  other  tribes. 


APPENDIX. 

THE   NORTH  AMERICANS— YESTEKDAY  AND  TO-DAY. 

THE  Indians  of  this  continent  constitute  a  single 
race,  whose  physical  characteristics  are  remarkably 
alike  throughout  all  tribes.  Though  the  diverse  condi 
tions  of  life  in  various  parts  of  a  wide  continent  have 
caused  differences  of  stature,  colour,  and  development 
in  certain  directions,  these  differences  are  of  minor 
importance,  and  it  is  probable  that  there  is  no  such 
wide  variation  as  is  found  among  different  groups  of 
the  white,  black,  and  yellow  races. 

An  Indian  is  always  an  Indian,  yet  each  tribe  has 
its  own  characteristics.  The  popular  notion  that  all 
Indians  have  the  same  speech  and  the  same  modes  of 
life  is  wholly  erroneous.  In  North  America,  north 
of  Mexico,  there  were  nearly  sixty  distinct  linguistic 
stocks  or  groups  of  languages,  which,  so  far  as  known, 
had  no  relation  to  each  other,  and  represent  groups  of 
Indians  apparently  unconnected  by  ties  of  blood  with 
any  other  family.  In  other  words,  these  tribes  differ 
from  each  other  in  speech  more  widely  than  do  the 
different  European  nations ;  for  all  the  European  na 
tions,  such  as  Russian,  German,  Italian — except  the 
intrusive  Turks,  Huns,  etc. — constitute  parts  of  a  sin 
gle  linguistic  stock,  the  Indo-European  or  Aryan. 
The  difference  between  two  Indian  linguistic  stocks, 

241 


24:2  THE  STORY  OP  THE  INDIAN. 

such  as  Algonquin  and  Dakota,  is,  therefore,  not  that 
between  Greeks  and  Germans,  but  between  the  greater 
groups  Aryan  and  Turanian,  or  Aryan  and  Semetic, 
and  such  stocks  as  Algonquin,  Dakota,  Pawnee,  Atha 
bascan,  and  Iroquois  constitute  families  of  equal  rela 
tive  rank  with  the  Old  World  families  just  men 
tioned. 

While  some  of  the  Indian  families  were  made  up 
of  many  tribes  speaking  different  dialects,  or  even 
using  languages  unintelligible  to  each  other,  and  con 
trolling  a  vast  extent  of  territory,  others  consisted  of 
a  single  small  tribe  without  apparent  affinities  with 
any  of  its  neighbours.  So,  on  the  Pacific  coast,  where 
about  two  thirds  of  the  different  linguistic  stocks  ex 
ist,  one  may  find  a  little  village  of  fishing  Indians  who 
— they  say — have  from  time  immemorial  inhabited  this 
same  region,  and  who  yet  have  nothing  in  common 
with  their  nearest  neighbours  a  few  miles  away,  and  are 
unable  to  communicate  with  them  except  by  signs,  or 
— to-day — by  the  so-called  Chinook  jargon,  the  com 
mon  trade  language  of  the  northwest  coast. 

But  while  a  vast  territory  might  be  inhabited  and 
controlled  by  one  family,  as  much  of  the  eastern  United 
States  and  Canada  nearly  as  far  as  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains  was  controlled  by  the  Algonquin  family,  this 
occupancy  did  not  necessarily  mean  that  all  other 
families  were  excluded  from  such  territory.  At  va 
rious  points  all  over  such  a  region,  there  might  be 
areas,  large  or  small,  which  were  held  by  tribes  genet 
ically  distinct  from  the  prevailing  family  and  holding 
their  own  against  their  neighbours. 

As  the  families  differed  from  each  other  in  lan 
guage,  so  the  tribes  differed  in  culture.  North  of  the 
Mexican  boundary,  all  tribes  were  practically  in  the 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  243 

stone  age  of  development.  The  use  of  metals  was  un 
known.  In  a  few  cases,  native  copper  was  employed 
for  ornament  or  utensil,  but  it  was  treated  as  a  stone — 
hammered  into  shape.  It  was  not  known  as  a  metal. 
The  Indian's  arms  were  made  of  stone,  chipped,  ham 
mered,  and  ground  from  flint  or  some  other  hard  rock. 
His  clothing  was  made  of  skin.  Many  tribes  made 
pottery  of  a  very  simple  kind,  useful  for  dishes  and 
cooking  utensils.  Their  permanent  dwellings  were  as 
varied  as  the  regions  which  they  inhabited,  yet  in  their 
movable  lodges  or  tipis,  which  were  made  of  skins  or 
bark,  one  type  prevailed  over  almost  the  whole  conti 
nent.  While  the  subsistence  of  the  people  was  largely 
derived  from  hunting  and  fishing,  or  from  the  wild 
fruits  of  the  earth,  yet  a  very  large  proportion  of  the 
tribes  practised  agriculture.  This  is  especially  true  of 
those  which  inhabited  the  country  of  abundant  rain 
fall  lying  between  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the  Missis 
sippi  River,  yet  it  was  by  no  means  confined  to  these 
alone,  for  many  tribes  of  the  high  dry  plains,  of  Paw 
nee,  Dakota,  and,  in  ancient  times,  Algonquin  stock, 
raised  crops  of  corn,  beans,  and  squashes.  The  tribes 
of  the  extreme  southwest  depended  for  support  very 
largely  on  agriculture,  and  practised  irrigation. 

Picture  writings  were  used  among  almost  all  the 
tribes,  but  were,  of  course,  carried  to  their  greatest 
perfection  among  those  families  whose  culture  was 
highest.  Among  the  Nahuatl  and  Mayas  of  the  south, 
and  the  Algonquins  and  Iroquois  of  the  north,  such 
picture  writings — on  skin,  bark,  or  cloth — sometimes 
took  the  form  of  long  historical  documents,  or  served 
to  render  permanent  the  ritual  of  important  ceremo 
nies.  But  even  among  the  nomads  of  the  plains, 
paintings  on  skins  often  commemorated  the  important 
IT 


244:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

events  of  the  year,  sometimes  by  months,  and  some  of 
these  ran  back  for  many  years — even,  it  is  said,  for  a 
century.  Such  writings  were,  if  not  history,  at  least 
records. 

The  social  condition  of  the  North  Americans  has 
been  greatly  misunderstood.  The  place  of  woman  in 
the  tribe  was  not  that  of  a  slave  or  of  a  beast  of  bur 
den.  The  existence  of  the  gentile  organization,  in 
most  tribes  with  descent  in  the  female  line,  forbade 
any  such  subjugation  of  woman.  In  many  tribes 
women  took  part  in  the  councils  of  the  chiefs  ;  in 
some,  women  were  even  the  tribal  rulers  ;  while  in 
all  they  received  a  fair  measure  of  respect  and  affec 
tion  from  those  related  to  them.  At  a  council  held 
in  1791  with  the  Huron-Iroquois  the  women  spoke  to 
the  American  commissioner  as  follows  :  "  You  ought 
to  hear  and  listen  to  what  we  women  shall  speak  as 
well  as  the  sachems,  for  we  are  the  owners  of  this  land, 
and  it  is  ours.  It  is  we  that  plant  it  for  our  and  their 
use.  Hear  us,  therefore,  for  we  speak  of  things  that 
concern  us  and  our  children." 

Among  the  Mokis  and  other  Pueblos,  and  among 
the  Navajoes,  men  and  women  work  together  in  the 
fields.  With  the  Mokis  the  young  unmarried  women 
are  not  expected  or  allowed  to  perform  such  heavy 
work  as  carrying  water  up  the  mesa,  and  with  the 
ISTavajoes  a  man  may  even  cut  out  and  sew  a  buckskin 
shirt.  Just  at  present,  the  keeper  of  the  tribal  medi 
cine  of  the  Kiowas  is  a  woman,  and  in  the  same  tribe 
the  grandmother  practically  rules  the  family,  although 
she  works  as  hard  as  the  other  women.  Among  the 
Cheyennes  the  woman  has  great  influence. 

The  notion  that  women  were  slaves  no  doubt  had 
its  origin  in  the  fact  that  their  duties  are  such  as  civ- 


•    THE  NORTH   AMERICANS.  245 

ilized  men  commonly  regard  as  toil,  while  the  more 
arduous  pursuits  of  hunting  and  war  are  looked  upon 
by  white  men  as  amusements.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  labours  of  this  savage  life  were  not  unevenly 
divided  between  the  sexes.  In  their  home  life  the 
Indians  were  much  like  other  people.  The  men,  as  a 
rule,  were  affectionate  husbands  and  fathers,  often  un 
dergoing  severe  sacrifices  and  privations  for  the  sake 
of  their  families.  Parents  were  devotedly  attached  to 
their  children,  and  a  strong  feeling  existed  between 
the  members  of  a  family,  even  though  the  tie  of  blood 
uniting  them  was  remote. 

Another  misconception  of  Indian  character  has 
obtained  a  firm  footing  in  the  popular  mind.  It  is 
generally  believed  that  these  people  are  grave,  taci 
turn,  and  sullen  in  their  ordinary  life.  This  is  far 
from  being  true.  Instead,  they  are  fond  of  society, 
gossipy,  great  talkers,  with  a  keen  sense  of  humour  and 
great  quickness  of  repartee.  In  their  villages  and  their 
camps,  frequent  visits  were  paid  from  lodge  to  lodge. 
In  time  of  plenty,  feasts  were  continual,  and  social 
gatherings  for  dancing,  story-telling,  or  conversation 
occurred  more  often  than  in  civilized  communities. 
Constantly  among  young  men,  and  often  among  young 
women,  were  formed  friendships  which  remind  one  of 
the  attachment  that  existed  between  David  and  Jona 
than,  and  such  friendships  frequently  lasted  through 
life,  or  were  interrupted  only  when  family  ties  were 
assumed. 

It  is  in  the  system  of  government  devised  by  some 
of  them  that  the  North  Americans  show  their  greatest 
advance  in  culture.  The  so-called  civilizations  of  the 
south — of  Peru  and  Mexico — while  much  higher  than 
those  of  tribes  inhabiting  the  territory  now  the  United 


246  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

States  and  Canada,  yet  differed  from  them  in  degree 
rather  than  in  kind,  and  the  league  of  the  Iroquois, 
since  it  has  been  thoroughly  understood,  has  chal 
lenged  admiration  both  for  its  organization  and  its 
purposes.  This  was  an  offensive  and  defensive  feder 
ation  of  five  tribes — the  Onondagas,  Oneidas,  Senecas, 
Cayugas,  and  Mohawks — formed  by  the  Onondaga  chief 
Hiawatha  about  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Of  it  Mr.  Hale  says  :  "  The  system  he  devised  was  to 
be  not  a  loose  and  transitory  league  but  a  permanent 
government.  While  each  nation  was  to  retain  its  own 
council  and  management  of  local  affairs,  the  general 
control  was  to  be  lodged  in  a  federal  senate,  composed 
of  representatives  to  be  elected  by  each  nation,  hold 
ing  office  during  good  behaviour,  and  acknowledged  as 
ruling  chiefs  throughout  the  whole  confederacy.  Still 
further  and  more  remarkable,  the  federation  was  not 
to  be  a  limited  one.  It  was  to  be  indefinitely  expan 
sible.  The  avowed  design  of  its  purpose  was  to  abolish 
war  altogether."  As  is  well  said  by  Dr.  Brinton,  "  Cer 
tainly  this  scheme  was  one  of  the  most  farsighted,  and 
in  its  aim  beneficent,  which  any  statesman  has  ever 
designed  for  man." 

As  a  rule,  the  government  of  the  Indians  was  a 
simple  democracy.  The  chiefs  were  usually  elected— 
though  sometimes  hereditary — and  held  office  for  life, 
or  until  advancing  years  caused  their  resignation.  As 
has  been  said,  women  were  sometimes  made  chiefs. 
Often  the  chief  of  a  tribe  was  chosen  from  the  chiefs 
of  the  gentes  by  his  fellow  chiefs.  In  one  of  the 
tribes  of  the  Iroquois  league  the  council  which  elected 
the  chief  was  composed  altogether  of  women.  But 
the  chief's  power  was  not  absolute.  In  minor  mat 
ters  which  pertained  to  the  ordinary  affairs  of  the 


-      THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  247 

everyday  life  of  the  people,  he  acted  independently 
and  his  orders  were  obeyed,  but  grave  concerns,  such 
as  quarrels  between  prominent  men,  relations  with 
neighbouring  tribes,  the  making  of  war  or  peace,  were 
discussed  in  a  council  of  chiefs  and  prominent  men, 
where  each  individual  was  at  liberty  to  express  his 
opinion  and  to  cast  his  vote.  The  head  chief  acted 
as  the  presiding  officer  of  such  council,  and  if  he  was 
a  strong  man  his  views  carried  great  weight ;  but  un 
less  he  could  win  over  to  his  side  a  majority  of  the 
council  he  had  to  yield.  Thus  the  chief's  authority 
was  personal  rather  than  official,  but  for  this  very  rea 
son  it  was  strong ;  for,  where  the  office  was  elective, 
that  man  was  made  chief  who  had  proved  by  his  deeds 
from  childhood  to  middle  age  that  he  was  a  more  able 
man  than  his  fellows — that  he  was  brave  in  war,  wise 
in  peace,  careful  for  the  well-being  of  his  people  in 
the  everyday  affairs  of  life,  generous  and  kindly,  yet 
firm — in  short,  that  he  was  a  leader  in  time  of  war 
and  a  father  in  time  of  peace.  His  council  was  com 
posed  of  men  young  and  old,  some  one  of  whom  might 
later  take  his  place. 

I  give  a  brief  sketch  of  the  past  and  present  homes 
and  conditions  of  some  of  the  more  important  of  the 
North  American  family  stocks. 

ALGONQUIN". 

The  area  occupied  by  this  family  was  far  more  ex 
tensive  than  that  held  by  any  other  North  American 
stock.  On  the  Atlantic  seaboard  they  controlled  the 
territory  from  Labrador  on  the  north  to  North  Caro 
lina  on  the  south.  From  Labrador  westward,  tribes 
of  this  stock  occupied  all  of  British  America  nearly  to 
the  Rocky  Mountains  and  south  of  Peace  River  and 


24:8  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

Churchill  Eiver.  They  also  held  parts  of  what  are  now 
North  Dakota,  Minnesota,  Wisconsin,  Iowa,  and  Mis 
souri,  all  of  Illinois,  Indiana,  Kentucky,  and  West 
Virginia,  and  most  of  Michigan,  Ohio,  and  Maryland. 
There  was  a  settlement  in  South  Carolina,  and  a  west 
ern  branch  had  pushed  its  way  into  South  Dakota  and 
Wyoming,  and  westward  into  Colorado.  No  other 
family  of  North  Americans  held  territory  at  all  com 
parable  for  extent  or  for  excellence — either  in  fertility 
or  abundance  of  game — with  that  possessed  by  the  Al- 
gonquins,  who,  in  numbers,  intelligence,  and  physical 
qualities,  stand  among  the  first  of  the  families  of 
North  American  Indians. 

It  is  impossible  to  conjecture  what  were  the  num 
bers  of  the  Algon quins  before  the  coming  of  the 
whites,  but  we  may  imagine  that  they  were  large.  If 
the  territory  which  they  inhabited  was  thinly  settled, 
it  was  also  vast.  Most  of  the  southeastern  tribes  of 
this  stock  practised  agriculture  as  well  as  hunting, 
and  inhabiting  as  they  did  a  fertile  country,  which 
also  abounded  in  game  and  in  natural  fruits,  it  may 
be  conjectured  that  they  found  little  or  no  difficulty 
in  supporting  life.  It  is  not  likely  that  in  primitive 
times  they  often  suffered  from  hunger.  They  were 
brave,  too,  and  well  able  to  defend  themselves  against 
the  attacks  of  their  enemies,  and  there  would  seem  to 
be  no  reason  why  this  naturally  vigorous  stock  should 
not  have  been  very  numerous,  at  least  until  it  ap 
proached  the  point  where  the  food  question  became 
troublesome. 

In  the  vast  territory  occupied  by  the  Algonquins 
there  were  many  different  tribes,  and  it  is  not  to  be 
imagined  that  all  of  these  recognised  the  tie  of  blood 
which  connected  them,  or  that  all  of  this  family  were 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  249 

necessarily  friends  and  allies.  The  reverse  of  this  was 
true,  and  quarrels  and  wars  between  different  tribes 
probably  took  place  frequently.  Yet  often  the  tribes 
of  this  blood  united  against  the  fierce  Iroquois,  whose 
territory  about  the  easternmost  of  the  Great  Lakes  and 
the  upper  St.  Lawrence  River,  lay  in  the  very  midst  of 
the  Algonquin  lands,  and  another  division  of  which  bor 
dered  these  lands  upon  the  south.  Between  these  two 
great  families  there  was  a  deep  and  bitter  hostility, 
sometimes  interrupted  by  intervals  of  peace,  which, 
however,  were  not  of  long  duration.  To  this  rule  the 
Wyandots,  descendants  of  the  old  Hurons,  were  a  no 
table  exception.  They  were  uniformly  allies  of  the 
Algonquins. 

The  date  at  which  the  westernmost  branches  of  the 
Algonquin  stock  came  to  their  present  homes  is  com 
paratively  recent,  for  it  is  within  the  last  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  that  the  Arapahoes — including  the  Gros 
Ventres  of  the  prairie — the  Blackfeet,  and  the  Chey- 
ennes  reached  the  Continental  Divide.  If  we  may 
believe  Cheyenne  tradition,  they  were  the  first  tribe 
to  penetrate  as  far  as  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Their 
oral  history  tells  that  with  the  Arapahoes  they  came 
into  the  Black  Hills  country,  in  Dakota,  about  two 
hundred  and  twenty-five  years  ago,  having  journeyed 
from  the  northeast,  perhaps  originally  from  the  shores 
of  Lake  Superior,  or  possibly  of  Hudson  Bay,  for 
they  describe  an  immense  body  of  water  in  a  barren, 
treeless  country,  abounding  in  great  rocks.  The  Black- 
feet  came  next.  They  say  that  not  many  generations 
ago  they  lived  near  Peace  River,  far  from  the  moun 
tains.  To  the  east  of  them  were  the  timber  Crees, 
and  to  the  north  tribes  of  Athabascan  stock.  They 
made  their  way  slowly  south  and  west,  and  probably 


250  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

reached  the  Rocky  Mountains  less  than  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago. 

The  following  list  of  the  principal  tribes  of  the 
Algonquin  stock  is  taken  in  part  from  Brinton  and 
from  Powell : 

ABNAKI  —  "  eastlanders."  Nova  Scotia  and  south  bank  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  River. 

ALGONQUIN  =  people  living  "  on  the  other  side  "  of  the  stream. 
North  of  the  St.  Lawrence  River,  Ontario,  and  Quebec. 

ARAPAHOE  =  "  traders  "  (!)  (Dunbar).  Flanks  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  from  Black  Hills  to  head  waters  of  the  Arkansas 
River. 

BLACKFOOT.  Flanks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  from  the  Sas 
katchewan  River  south  to  Yellowstone  River. 

CHEYENNE  =  "  red  or  painted " — i.  e.,  alien,  so-called  by  the 
Sioux  (Clark).  Flanks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  from  Black 
Hills  to  head  waters  of  Arkansas  River. 

CREE,  abbreviated  from  Kiristinon  —  "killer"  (f).  Southern 
and  western  shores  of  Hudson  Bay,  west  to  Rocky  Moun 
tains. 

DELAWARE,  or  Leni  Lenapi  =  "  original,  or  principal,  men." 
Along  the  Delaware  River. 

ILLINOIS,  from  ilini  =  "  men."     On  the  Illinois  River. 

KICKAPOO  =  people  of  the  river,  "  easily  navigable."  Upper 
Illinois  River. 

MAHICAN,  a  dialectic  form  of  Mohegan,  but  a  distinct  tribe. 
Lower  Hudson  River. 

MIAMI  =  "  pigeon."    Miami  and  Upper  Wabash  Rivers. 

MIKMAK.     Nova  Scotia. 

MILISIT  =  "  broken  talkers."    New  Brunswick. 

MENOMINI  —  "  wild  rice  people."    About  Green  Bay,  Wisconsin. 

MOHEGAN.     Lower  Connecticut  River. 

MONTAGNAIS  —  "  mountaineers  "  (French  writers).  Northern 
shores  of  lower  St.  Lawrence  River. 

MASSACHUSETT  =  people  "  at  the  Blue  Hills."  On  Massachu 
setts  Bay. 

MONTAUK  =  people  at  the  "  manito  tree."    Eastern  Long  Island. 

NANTICOKE.     Eastern  shore  of  Chesapeake  Bay. 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  251 

OJIBWA  or  CHIPPEWA  =  people  of  the  "  puckered  moccasin  "  (?) 

(Warren).     Ontario  River. 
PANTICO.     North  of  Pamlico  Sound. 

PIANKASHA  =  "  western  people."    On  lower  Wabash  River. 
POTTAWATOMI  =  "  blowers  " — i.  e.,  "  council  firemakers."    South 

of  Lake  Michigan. 
SAC  (Fox)  =  "  yellow  earth  "  people  (Drake).    About  Rock  River, 

Illinois. 
SHAWANO  or  SHAWNEE  =  southern   people.      On   Cumberland 

River. 

Most  of  the  eastern  tribes  of  the  Algonquins  have 
long  been  extinct,  having  either  perished  utterly,  or 
their  scattered  fragments  having  migrated  and  joined 
other  tribes,  in  which  they  have  become  merged.  But 
these  extinct  tribes  will  not  be  wholly  forgotten,  for 
their  names  are  fixed  in  the  geography  of  this  coun 
try,  and  will  thus  be  preserved  so  long  as  America 
shall  endure. 

In  the  Seventh  Annual  Eeport  of  the  Bureau  of 
Ethnology,  published  in  1891,  the  present  number  of 
the  Algonquin  race  is  given  as  ninety-five  thousand, 
of  which  about  sixty  thousand  are  in  Canada  and  the 
remainder  in  the  United  States.  Many  of  these  last 
are  self-supporting  and  more  or  less  civilized,  though 
still  clinging  tenaciously  to  many  of  their  ancient  be 
liefs  and  practices.  The  same  volume  contains  a  list 
of  the  tribes  officially  recognized,  and  their  present 
numbers  and  locations,  compiled  chiefly  from  the  Re 
port  for  1889  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of 
Indian  Affairs  and  the  Canadian  Report  for  1888, 
which  gives  the  following  facts  : 
ABNAKI,  including  Passamaquoddies  and  Milisits  in  Maine,  New 

Brunswick,  and  Quebec.     1,874  (?). 
ALGONQUIN,  in  Ontario  and  Quebec.  Canada.     4,767  (f). 
ARAPAHOE,  at  Cheyenne  agency,  Oklahoma  Territory,  and  at 

Shoshoni  agency,  Wyoming.    2,157. 


252  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

The  Atse'na  or  Gros  Ventres  of  the  Prairie,  a  detached  band 
of  the  Arapahoes,  are  not  mentioned  in  this  list.  They  are 
at  the  Fort  Belknap  agency  in  northern  Montana  with  the 
Assiniboines,  and  number  about  509. 

BLACKFOOT,  at  the  Blackfoot  agency,  Montana,  at  Calgary,  and 
on  Belly  River,  in  Northwest  Territories,  6,743. 

CHEYENNE,  at  Cheyenne  agency,  Oklahoma  Territory,  Tongue 
River  agency,  Montana,  and  Pine  Ridge  agency,  South  Da 
kota,  3,473. 

CREE,  in  Manitoba  and  the  Northwest  Territories.  A  few  Crees 
who  were  engaged  in  the  Riel  rebellion  took  refuge  in  Mon 
tana,  where  they  still  remain,  supporting  themselves  by 
trapping  and  the  sale  of  articles  which  they  manufacture. 
17,386. 

DELAWARE,  about  one  thousand  are  incorporated  and  live  with 
the  Cherokees  in  the  Indian  Territory,  others  are  with  the 
Wichitas  in  the  Indian  Territory,  the  Senecas  and  Onon- 
dagas  in  New  York,  the  Chippewas  on  the  Thames  River 
in  Ontario,  the  Six  Nations  on  Grand  River,  Ontario,  and 
with  the  Chippewas  at  the  Pottawatomi  agency  in  Kansas. 
1,750  (?). 

KICKAPOO — a  part  are  at  the  Sac  and  Fox  agency,  Indian  Terri 
tory,  others  at  the  Pottawatomi  agency,  Kansas,  and  some 
in  Mexico.  762  (?). 

MENOMINI,  at  Green  Bay  agency,  Wisconsin.     1,311. 

MIAMI,  Quapaw  agency,  Indian  Territory,  and  in  Indiana. 
374  (!). 

MICMAC,  in  Nova  Scotia,  New  Brunswick,  Prince  Edward  Island, 
and  Quebec,  Canada.  4,108. 

MISSISAUGA,  with  Monsoni,  Muskegon,  etc.,  in  Ontario  and  Ru 
pert's  Land,  Canada.  4,790. 

MONTAGANIS,  Quebec.     1,919. 

NASCOAPEE,  Quebec.    2,860. 

OJIBWA  or  CHIPPEWA,  at  White  Earth  agency,  Minnesota ;  La 
Pointe  agency,  Wisconsin  ;  Mackina  agency,  Michigan ; 
Devil's  Lake  agency,  North  Dakota ;  Pottawatomi  agency, 
Kansas  ;  Chippewas  of  Lake  Superior,  Lake  Huron,  Sarnia, 
on  the  Thames,  on  Walpole  Island,  on  Manitoulin  and  Cock- 
burn  Islands,  all  in  Ontario,  Canada,  and  Sauteux  and  Chip 
pewas  in  Manitoba.  31,928  (?). 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  253 

OTTAWA,  at  Quapaw  agency,  Indian  Territory  ;  at  Mackina 
agency,  Michigan ;  on  Manitoulin  and  Cockburn  Islands, 
Ontario,  Canada.  4,794  (f). 

PEORIA,  Quapaw  agency,  Indian  Territory.     160. 

POTTAWATOMI,  at  the  Sac  and  Fox  agency,  Oklahoma  Territory ; 
Pottawatomi  agency,  Kansas ;  Mackina  agency,  Michi 
gan  ;  Prairie  Band,  Wisconsin ;  on  Walpole  Island,  On 
tario,  Canada.  1,465. 

SAC  and  Fox,  at  Sac  and  Fox  agency,  Oklahoma  Territory ;  Sac 
and  Fox  agency,  Iowa ;  Pottawatomi  agency,  Kansas.  973. 

SHAWNEE,  Quapaw  agency,  Indian  Territory  ;  Sac  and  Fox 
agency,  Oklahoma  Territory ;  incorporated  with  the  Chero- 
kees,  Indian  Territory.  1,519. 

STOCKBRIDGE  (Mohican),  at  Green  Bay,  Wisconsin,  and  in  New 
York  with  the  Tuscaroras  and  Senecas.  117. 

ATHABASCAN. 

What  the  Algonquin  linguistic  family  was  to  east 
ern  North  America  the  Athabascan  was  to  the  west. 
Both  touched  the  land  of  the  Innuit  on  the  north,  and 
the  east  and  west  range  of  each  covered  sixty  degrees 
of  longitude,  so  that  between  Hudson  Bay  and  the 
Rocky  Mountains  the  countries  of  the  two  overlapped ; 
but  while  the  southernmost  tribe  of  the  Algonquin  was 
only  thirty  degrees  from  the  northern  limit  of  the 
family,  at  least  forty  degrees  of  latitude  separated  the 
Athabascans  of  the  Arctic  from  those  of  Mexico.  This 
great  north  and  south  area  was,  however,  not  contin 
uous.  There  was  a  wide  territory,  extending  over  four 
teen  or  fifteen  degrees  of  latitude,  where — except  for 
a  few  small  settlements  on  the  Pacific  coast — no  Atha 
bascans  were  found. 

Although  the  area  occupied  by  the  Athabascans 
was  so  extensive,  it  presented  in  its  adaptability  for 
human  occupancy  a  marked  contrast  to  that  possessed 
by  the  Algonquins.  These,  in  their  southern  terri- 


254:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

tory,  inhabited  a  country  of  abundant  rainfall,  fertile 
and  admirably  adapted  for  agricultural  pursuits,  while 
those  Athabascans  who  were  not  dwellers  in  the  frozen 
north  occupied  an  arid,  desert  country,  where  rains  are 
infrequent  and  agriculture  impossible,  except  by  means 
of  irrigation. 

Physically,  the  members  of  this  family  are  moder 
ately  well  developed,  being  often  tall  and  muscular 
and  very  enduring,  but  those  of  the  north  are  said  to 
be  short-lived.  They  are  a  strong  and  masterful  peo 
ple,  and  Mr.  Mooney,  who  has  seen  much  of  them, 
writes  me  :  "  Excepting  in  the  extreme  north  we  find 
the  Tinne  tribes  almost  everywhere  asserting  and  exer 
cising  superiority  over  their  neighbours.  This  applies 
to  the  detached  bands  in  Washington,  Oregon,  and 
California,  and  to  the  Navajoes  in  the  south.  The 
Tinne  tribes  in  California  have  imposed  their  lan 
guage  and  tribal  regulations  upon  their  neighbours. 
The  Navajoes  are  pre-eminent  stock  raisers,  weavers, 
and  metal  workers.  The  Apache  are  our  wiliest  In 
dian  fighters,  and  were  steadily  driving  the  civilized 
Mexicans  southward,  when  the  United  States  inter 
fered." 

As  might  be  supposed  from  the  distance  which 
separates  the  homes  of  the  northern  and  southern 
groups  of  this  family,  the  two  differed  widely  in  their 
ways  and  modes  of  life.  The  Athabascans  of  the  north 
were  hunters  and  fishermen.  In  summer  they  followed 
the  great  game  or  spread  their  nets  in  the  lakes ;  in 
winter  they  harnessed  their  dogs  to  the  sledges  and 
careered  over  the  frozen  wastes.  The  desert-inhabit 
ing  Apaches  and  Navajoes  of  the  south  know  neither 
dog  sledges  nor  boats.  They  are  mountaineers  and 
hunters,  famed  for  their  endurance  and  able  to  take 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS,  255 

up  the  track  of  a  deer,  and  between  sunrise  and  sun 
set  to  run  him  down  and  kill  him  with  a  knife.  Al 
though  hunters,  they  are  also  tillers  of  the  soil,  raising 
corn  and  other  vegetables,  and  gathering  the  nuts  of 
the  pifion,  the  bean  of  the  mesquite,  and  the  root  of 
the  American  aloe. 

The  Athabascans  use  lodges  of  skin  or  bark  in  the 
north,  and  in  the  south  rude  huts  made  of  branches 
of  trees.  They  make  pottery  and  wickerwork  baskets, 
which  are  so  tightly  woven  that  they  serve  as  water 
vessels,  and  their  stone  nictates  used  for  grinding  corn 
are  far  more  efficient  implements  than  the  mortar  in 
which  the  grain  was  pounded  by  tribes  further  to  the 
east.  The  canoes  of  the  interior  tribes  of  the  north 
are  of  bark.  The  Navajoes  have  long  been  renowned 
for  the  handsome  blankets  which  they  weave.  This 
with  them  is  not  an  aboriginal  art,  but  is  borrowed 
from  their  immediate  neighbours  the  Mokis  and  Zunis, 
with  whom  and  with  some  northwest  coast  tribes  it  is 
aboriginal,  for  the  latter  weave  excellent  blankets  from 
the  fleece  of  the  wild  white  goat. 

Among  the  tribes  of  this  family,  great  differences 
exist  in  the  gentile  systems  and  in  the  laws  of  con 
sanguinity.  In  some  tribes,  descent  is  in  the  female 
line,  and  a  man  considers  his  father  no  relation, 
while  in  other  tribes  the  son  belongs  to  his  father's 
gens. 

Of  the  northern  group  of  the  Athabascans,  the 
southernmost  tribe  inhabiting  the  central  region  are 
the  Sarsi,  who  for  many  years  have  lived  with  the 
Blackfeet.  These  are  an  offshoot  of  the  Beaver  In 
dians,  and,  according  to  tradition,  left  their  own  coun 
try  about  one  hundred  years  ago  on  account  of  a 
quarrel  with  another  camp  of  their  own  people,  and 


256  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

migrated  southward.     They  joined  the  Blackfeet,  and 
have  lived  with  them  ever  since. 

Among  the  best-known  tribes  of  Athabascan  stock 
are  the 

APACHE  =  "  enemies."    Arizona  and  Northern  Mexico. 
ATNA  =  "strangers."     On  Copper  River,  Alaska. 
BEAVER.    On  Peace  River,  British  America. 
CHIPPEWYAN  =  "  pointed  coats."     Coast  of  Hudson  Bay  and 

north  of  Crees. 

HUPA.     California,  Trinity  River. 
KENAI  =  "  people."    Kenai  Peninsula,  Alaska. 
KUCHIN  =  "  people."    Yukon  River,  Alaska. 
NAVAJO  =  "  whetstone   or   knife  -  whetting  people"  (Mooney). 

New  Mexico  and  Arizona. 

NEHANI  =  "  yellow  knives  "  (?).     Upper  Stikine  River,  Alaska. 
SARSI.     Beaver  offshoot. 

SIKANI.     Upper  Peace  River,  British  America. 
SLAVE.     Upper  Mackenzie  River,  British  America. 
TAKULI  =  "  carriers."     Fraser  River,  British  Columbia. 
TUTUTENA.     Rogue  River,  Oregon. 
UMPQUA.     Near  Salem,  Oregon. 
WAILAKI  —  people    of    the    "  northern    language."      Northern 

California. 

The  northern  tribes  of  this  group  are  more  gener 
ally  known  as  Hare  Indians,  Dog  Ribs,  Chippewyans, 
Yellow  Knives  (Nehani),  Strong  Bows,  Carrier  (Ta- 
kuli),  etc.  There  are  supposed  to  be  about  thirty- 
three  thousand  Athabascans,  of  whom  about  one 
fourth  belong  to  the  northern  group.  Of  the  south 
ern  tribes  tKe  best  known  are  the  various  bands  of 
Apaches  inhabiting  Arizona  and  Mexico,  who  have 
shown  themselves  so  fierce  in  war  and  so  apt  in  escap 
ing  the  troops  sent  in  pursuit  of  them,  and  the  Nava- 
joes,  whose  fame  rests  in  large  measure  on  the  peaceful 
art  of  blanket  weaving.  The  Apaches  are  still  more 
or  less  wild,  and  have  not  made  very  great  progress 


-     THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  257 

toward  civilization ;  but  tlie  Navajoes  possess  some  cat 
tle,  many  horses,  and  great  herds  of  sheep  and  goats, 
and  have  long  been  self-supporting.  They  are  well- 
disposed  and  industrious,  saving  and  progressive,  and 
in  advancement  toward  civilization  stand  high  among 
the  tribes  of  the  west.  They  probably  number  be 
tween  eighteen  and  twenty  thousand. 

The  small  tribes  of  Athabascans  of  the  Pacific 
coast  are  at  various  agencies  in  California  and  Ore 
gon,  usually  with  tribes  of  other  stocks.  They  are 
moderately  advanced,  till  the  ground,  raise  some  live 
stock,  and  the  men  labour  for  the  whites  in  the  salmon 
canneries,  the  hop  fields,  and  on  the  farms. 

DAKOTA. 

Six  States  of  the  Union  bear  the  names  of  tribes  of 
the  Dakota  stock,  and  of  late  years  no  group  of  North 
American  Indians  has  been  better  known  than  these. 
At  the  time  when  general  immigration  to  the  country 
west  of  the  Mississippi  began,  this  family  occupied 
much  of  the  territory  entered  on  by  the  whites,  and 
for  a  number  of  years  conflicts  and  wars  were  frequent, 
culminating  in  1876  with  the  Ouster  battle.  For  a 
few  years  after  that,  the  army  was  at  work  clearing  out 
the  scattered  camps  of  hostile  Sioux  in  Montana  and 
Dakota,  but  since  that  time  there  has  been  nothing  in 
the  nature  of  a  general  war  between  this  stock  and  the 
whites,  though  there  was  a  short-lived  but  bloody  out 
break  in  1890-'91. 

The  name  Dakota  or  Lahkota,  by  which  the  prin 
cipal  tribes  of  this  stock,  the  Sioux,  call  themselves, 
means  "  confederated,"  "  allied,"  while  the  commoner 
term  Sioux  is  a  French  corruption  of  an  Algonquin 
word,  nadowe'si-iig,  meaning  originally  "  snakes,"  and 


258  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

so  enemies.  In  this  sense  it  has  been  used  by  the 
Ojibwa  in  modern  times,  although  not  as  applied  to 
the  Sioux. 

History  and  tradition  find  several  of  the  most  im 
portant  tribes  of  the  Dakotas  occupying  upper  Michi 
gan,  Wisconsin,  and  eastern  Minnesota,  though  long 
before  this  some  must  have  taken  the  journey  to  and 
across  the  Great  Plains.  The  Crows  have  occupied 
the  eastern  flanks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  the 
Stonies — a  tribe  of  the  Assiniboines — the  mountains 
still  further  north  for  a  very  long  time.  The  Assini 
boines,  too,  must  long  have  lived  in  the  prairie  coun 
try  of  what  is  now  eastern  North  Dakota,  for — accord 
ing  to  Cheyenne  tradition — they  were  there  when  these 
last  migrated  from  the  northeast.  It  is  probable,  how 
ever,  that  the  great  body  of  those  tribes  now  known  in 
the  vernacular  as  Sioux,  lived  in  early  historic  times 
about  the  western  great  lakes  and  the  head  waters  of 
the  Mississippi.  From  this  territory  they  were  driven, 
or  crowded  out,  by  the  westward  movement  of  the  Al 
gonquin  tribes  and  by  settlements,  and  spread  them 
selves  over  much  of  the  Great  Plains. 

An  eastern  origin  is  now  pretty  well  established  for 
this  stock,  for  in  Virginia,  North  and  South  Carolina, 
and  Mississippi  were  the  homes  of  tribes  now  extinct, 
which  philologists  class  with  this  stock.*  Such  were 
the  Catawba  in  South  Carolina;  the  Tutelo,  Saponi, 
and  Woccon,  in  North  Carolina;  the  Occaneechi  in 
Virginia ;  the  Biloxi  and  possibly  other  tribes  in  Mis 
sissippi.  Catlin  has  shown  that  the  Mandans  reached 
the  Missouri  River  by  travelling  down  the  Ohio.  With- 

*  Mooney,  The  Siouan  Tribes  of  the  East,  Bulletin  Bureau 
of  Ethnology,  Washington. 


,      THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  250 

in  recent  times  a  number  of  the  Dakota  tribes  have 
occupied  the  timbered  country,  and  have  not  been 
dwellers  on  the  plains.  Such  are  the  Winnebagoes, 
Osages,  Quapaws,  Missourias,  and  others. 

Physically  and  intellectually  the  Dakotas  stand 
high,  and  in  stature  and  development  the  mountain 
Crows  are  exceeded  by  no  tribe  in  the  west,  unless  it 
be  the  Cheyennes  and  Arapahoes. 

Most  of  the  tribes  have  lost  the  agricultural  habits 
which  all  probably  once  possessed,  and  which  the  Man- 
dans,  Hidatsa.  and  some  others  still  practise.  Others 
have  only  recently  given  up  this  habit,  as  occasionally 
shown  by  a  sub-tribal  name — as  Mini-co-o-ju — "  They 
plant  by  the  water."  Some  of  the  Dakotas  manufac 
tured  pottery,  and  the  Mandans  even  made  blue  glass 
beads — after  the  coming  of  the  whites.  This  tribe, 
too,  occupied  permanent  houses. 

There  was  the  widest  variation  in  the  gentile  sys 
tem,  where  it  existed  at  all.  With  some,  descent  was 
in  the  male,  with  others,  in  the  female  line.  The 
chieftainship  was  hereditary,  descending  from  father 
to  son,  though  an  early  traveller  found  the  Winne 
bagoes  ruled  over  by  a  woman  chief.  The  country 
held  by  the  Dakota  stock  in  modern  times  included 
a  part  of  Wisconsin  and  of  western  Minnesota,  most 
of  North  Dakota,  Iowa,  and  Missouri,  more  than  half 
of  Arkansas,  Montana,  and  Wyoming,  South  Dakota, 
and  a  large  part  of  eastern  Nebraska  and  Kansas,  and 
parts  of  British  Ame  'ica  near  the  Eocky  Mountains. 
Within  the  last  hundred  years  their  neighbours  have 
been,  on  the  north  and  east  and  a  part  of  the  west, 
Algonquins  ;  on  the  south  Pawnees,  Shoshonis,  and 
Kiowas ;  and  on  the  west,  Shoshonis,  Kiowas,  and  Al 
gonquins.  Besides  this,  their  territory  was  interrupted 
18 


2(50  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

by  settlements  of  Pawnees,  who,  having  invaded  their 
territory,  had  driven  out,  conquered,  or  were  still  at 
war  with  various  tribes  of  this  stock. 

Most  of  the  plains  tribes  of  Dakota  stock  depended 
for  food  upon  the  buffalo  and  were  wanderers,  follow 
ing  the  herds  from  place  to  place,  and,  on  the  prairie, 
dwelling  in  the  conical  skin  lodges,  which  were  the 
common  habitations  of  the  plains  tribes. 

The  principal  tribes  of  the  Dakota  stock  are  : 

ABSORAKA  =  "  Crows  "  (?).    (The  name  seems  to  refer  to  some 

kind  of  bird.) 
ASSINIBOINES  =  "  stone  boilers."    On  Saskatchewan,  Souris,  and 

Assiniboine  River,  British  America. 
BILOXI.    Biloxi  Bay,  Mississippi. 
CATAWBA.     Catawba  River,  South  Carolina. 
CROWS  (or  Absoraka).     On  Yellowstone  River,  North  Dakota. 
DAKOTA  PROPER  or  Sioux  —  "  confederate."  Western  Minnesota, 

North  and  South  Dakota. 

IOWA  =  "  sleepy  ones."     On  the  Iowa  River,  Iowa. 
KANSA  or  KAW.     On  the  Kansas  River,  Kansas. 
MANDAN.     Upper  Missouri  River,  North  Dakota. 
HIDATSA  or  MINITARIS,  a  branch  of  the  Crows  =  "  those  who 

cross  the  water  "  (Minitari).     Upper  Missouri  River,  North 

Dakota. 
MISSOURIA  =  people  of  the  Great  Muddy.     Originally  on  lower 

Missouri  River,  Missouri. 
OCCANEECHI.     Southern  Virginia. 

OMAHA  =  "  upper  stream  people."    Niobrara  River,  Nebraska. 
OSAGE.     In  southern  Missouri. 
OTO.    On  lower  Platte  River,  Nebraska. 
PONCA.     Northwestern  Nebraska. 
QUAPAW  or  ARKANSA,  "down  stream  people."    On  the  lower 

Arkansas,  Arkansas. 
SAPONI.     Central  North  Carolina. 
WINNEBAGO  =  "  stinking  lake  people."    Eastern  Wisconsin. 

The  number  of  people  of  the  Dakota  stock  is  esti 
mated  to  be  about  45,000,  and  of  these  about  42,000 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  261 

are  in  the  United  States.  About  24,000  belong  to  the 
Sioux  tribes,  as  the  term  is  commonly  applied,  1,700 
to  the  Assiniboines,  1,200  to  the  Omahas,  1,600  to  the 
Osages,  2,200  to  the  Winnebagoes,  and  3,000  to  the 
Crows,  including  the  Minitaris  or  Hidatsa.  Most  of 
these  Indians  have  made  considerable  progress  toward 
civilization.  They  have  cattle,  cultivate  the  ground 
with  some  success,  and,  as  a  rule,  live  in  log  houses. 
There  are  no  longer  any  "  wild  "  Indians  among  them, 
and  they  are  becoming — though  slowly — a  fairly  hard 
working  part  of  the  population  of  the  West.  Their 
various  reservations  and  agencies,  of  which  there  are 
many,  are  situated  in  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  the  Da- 
kotas,  Montana,  Nebraska,  Kansas,  and  the  Indian 
Territory. 

IROQUOIS. 

In  the  early  history  of  America  no  Indian  family 
was  better  known  than  the  Iroquois — a  name  given  to  a 
group  of  tribes,  some  of  whom  made  up  the  celebrated 
Six  Nations.  The  territory  occupied  by  this  family 
lay  wholly  in  the  east,  and  in  two  principal  situations. 
The  northernmost  of  these  included  territory  on  both 
sides  of  the  St.  Lawrence  Kiver,  from  where  Quebec 
now  stands,  westward  to  Lake  Huron,  all  about  Lakes 
Ontario  and  Erie,  and  south  to  the  Chesapeake  Bay. 
They  thus  held  portions  of  Canada,  Ohio,  Michigan, 
Central  New  York,  and  the  greater  part  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  southward  along  the  valley  of  the  Susquehanna 
to  the  salt  water.  The  other  Iroquois  were  established 
almost  in  one  body  in  Virginia,  Tennessee,  North  and 
South  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Alabama.  The  northern 
territory  was  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  lands  occupied 
by  the  Algonquins,  while  the  southern  group  of  the 


202  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

tribes  had  for  neighbours  Algonquins  on  the  north 
and  west,  Dakotas  on  the  east,  and  Muskogis  on  the 
south. 

No  Indian  family  excelled  the  Iroquois  in  physical 
development  or  in  culture.  The  records  of  the  civil 
war,  in  which  some  companies  of  Iroquois  fought, 
show  that  these  stood  highest  of  any  bodies  of  our 
soldiers  in  stature  and  in  physical  strength  and  vigour. 
Intellectually  they  ranked  as  high.  The  league  of  the 
five  nations — Cayugas,  Mohawks,  Oneidas,  Onondagas, 
and  Senecas — to  which  was  afterward  added  a  sixth, 
the  Tuscaroras,  alone  stamps  them  as  a  stock  whose 
intellectual  vigour  exceeded  that  of  their  neighbours. 
Their  intelligence  was  shown  in  other  ways.  They 
were,  to  a  greater  extent  than  almost  any  other  Indian 
family,  agriculturists,  and  their  crops  supplied  each 
year  more  food  than  they  could  possibly  consume. 
They  lived  in  permanent  villages,  but  in  most  other 
respects  their  everyday  life  was  not  markedly  different 
from  that  of  other  Indians. 

It  was  among  the  Iroquois  that  the  gentile  system 
obtained  its  highest  development  among  our  northern 
tribes.  Descent  was  in  the  female  line,  and  mothers 
in  the  Iroquois  villages  had  a  power  and  an  influence 
greater  than  those  of  the  men.  They  were  the  owners 
of  the  land  and  of  most  of  the  personal  property ;  they 
were  the  councillors  of  the  tribes,  and  sometimes  even 
its  chiefs.  The  ancient  gentile  system  of  these  people 
still  persists,  even  among  the  civilized  Iroquois,  on 
their  reservations  in  Central  New  York,  and  on  Grand 
River,  Ontario,  and  of  late  years  this  has  become  a 
cause  of  more  or  less  heartburning  and  dissatisfac 
tion.  Among  the  Senecas  to-day  half-breed  children 
of  an  Indian  father  and  a  white  woman  are  called  by 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  263 

the  Senecas  whites,  are  not  allowed  to  draw  tribal  an 
nuities,  nor  to  have  any  share  in  the  public  affairs  of 
the  nation  ;  while  the  children  of  a  white  father  and 
an  Indian  mother  are  regarded  as  Indians,  and  have 
all  an  Indian's  rights  and  privileges.  The  same  rule 
holds  in  marriages  between  Indians  of  the  different 
tribes,  the  child  belonging  to  the  tribe  of  the  mother 
and  not  to  that  of  the  father.  This  matter  has  several 
times  come  up  in  the  courts  for  adjudication. 

The  southern  group  of  the  Iroquois  included  the 
Cherokees  and  the  Tuscaroras,  the  former  chiefly  in 
the  mountain  region  of  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee, 
and  the  latter  in  eastern  North  Carolina.  They  did 
not  differ  especially  from  their  northern  relations. 
Like  them,  they  built  connected  houses  of  logs,  and 
fortified  their  villages.  They  were  industrious  agri 
culturists  and  made  good  pottery.  The  ancestors  of 
the  Cherokees  were  quite  certainly  the  builders  of 
some  of  the  famous  mounds  in  Ohio. 

The  myths,  legends,  and  sacred  rituals  of  the  Iro 
quois  are  perhaps  better  known  than  those  of  any  other- 
Indians.  To  assist  in  the  preservation  of  these  they 
used  certain  aids  to  memory  in  the  shape  of  beads  or 
shells  strung  on  buckskin  strings,  the  combination  of 
the  beads  suggesting  certain  facts  and  events.  The 
Book  of  Rites,  edited  by  Mr.  Horatio  Hale,  is  an  ex 
ample  of  the  ritual  of  this  remarkable  people.  The 
Cherokees,  likewise,  had  a  great  body  of  ritual  record 
ed  in  their  modern  native  alphabet.  Mr.  Mooney  has 
procured  practically  all  of  this — about  seven  hundred 
formulas—  and  expects  to  translate  it  all.  A  part  has 
already  appeared  in  his  Sacred  Formulas  of  the  Chero 
kees,  in  the  Seventh  Annual  Eeport  of  the  Bureau  of 
Ethnology.  There  is  a  mass  of  similar  material  still 


264  ME  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

existing  in  many,  if  not  in  most  other  tribes,  although 
few  of  these  extended  productions  have  been  reduced 
to  writing  and  translated. 

The  principal  tribes  of  the  Iroquois  were  these  : 

CAYUGA  =  people  of  the  "  swampy  land."  South  of  Lake  On 
tario,  New  York. 

CHEROKEE.  Mountain  region  of  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Ten 
nessee. 

CONESTOGA  =  "  lodge  pole  people."  Lower  Susquehanna  River, 
Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland. 

ERIE  =  "  wild  cats."    South  of  Lake  Erie,  Ohio,  and  New  York. 

NEUTRAL  NATION.    West  of  Niagara  River,  Ontario. 

NOTTAWA  =  "  snake,"  i.  e.,  enemy.     Southern  Virginia. 

ONEIDA  =  people  of  the  "  stone."     Central  New  York. 

ONONDAGA  =  people  of  the  "  little  hill."    Central  New  York. 

SENECA.    Western  New  York. 

TUSCARORA  =  flax  or  hemp  pullers  (?)  (Hewitt ;  Morgan  makes  it 
"shirt  weavers").  The  name  refers  to  a  vegetable  cloth 
fibre.  Eastern  North  Carolina. 

WYANDOT  or  HURONS — Huron  is  the  old  provincial  French  for 
"  bear."  East  of  Georgian  Bay,  Ontario,  and  south  ;  south 
west  of  Lake  Erie  in  Ohio  and  Michigan. 

The  present  number  of  the  Iroquois  is  estimated  at 
about  44,000,  of  whom  about  9,000  are  in  Canada.  The 
Cherokees — one  of  the  five  civilized  tribes — make  up 
by  far  the  greater  part  of  these,  numbering  not  far 
from  28,000,  of  whom  more  than  26,000  are  in  Indian 
Territory,  the  remainder  forming  the  eastern  band, 
who  are  in  the  counties  of  Swain,  Jackson,  Cherokee, 
and  Graham,  in  North  Carolina.  The  Cherokee  na 
tion,  however,  includes  a  large  number  of  adopted 
whites  and  negroes.  Of  the  Cayugas  there  are  about 
1,300,  most  of  them  in  Canada,  but  a  few  in  New  York 
and  the  Indian  Territory.  About  2,400  Mohawks  are 
in  Canada,  as  are  also  1,000  Oneidas,  300  of  whom  are 
in  New  York  and  1,700  at  Green  Bay  agency, 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  265 

consin ;  350  Onondagas  are  in  Canada,  and  550  on 
New  York  reservations.  Of  the  3,100  Senecas,  127 
are  at  the  Quapaw  agency,  Indian  Territory,  200  are 
in  Canada,  and  the  remainder  in  New  York.  The 
Tuscaroras  number  about  750,  of  whom  about  half 
are  in  Canada  and  half  in  New  York.  There  are 
700  Wyandots,  300  at  the  Quapaw  agency  and  400  in 
Canada.  Besides  these,  there  are  about  4,400  Indians 
of  this  stock  known  as  Caughnawagas  and  St.  Regis, 
in  Canada  and  southern  New  York,  who  seem  to  be  a 
mixture  of  all  the  tribes  of  the  Six  Nations,  the  Mo 
hawks  predominating.  All  the  Cherokees  and  all  the 
New  York  reservation  Indians  are  civilized  and  self- 
supporting. 

MUSKOGI. 

An  especial  interest  attaches  to  the  Muskogi  or 
Chocta-Muskhogi  linguistic  stock,  because  its  sur 
vivors  constitute  four  out  of  the  five  so-called  civi 
lized  tribes,  and  also  because  there  is  a  reasonable 
probability  that  they  are  the  descendants  of  some  of 
those  people  who  built  the  great  mounds  in  the  Mis 
sissippi  Valley  and  in  the  Gulf  States,  which  have 
given  rise  to  so  many  speculations  and  theories  as  to 
their  origin.  This  stock  inhabited  the  country  "  from 
the  Savannah  Kiver  and  the  Atlantic  west  to  the 
Mississippi,  and  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  north  to 
the  Tennessee  River "  ;  and  although  the  tribes  dif 
fered  somewhat  from  one  another  in  physical  charac 
teristics,  their  relationship  is  close. 

The  culture  of  this  people  was  high.  They  were 
industrious  cultivators  of  the  soil,  and  raised  large 
crops  of  corn,  beans,  squashes,  and  tobacco.  Their 
towns  were  large  and  fortified,  and  often  built  on 


266  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

high  mounds  artificially  constructed,  and  their  houses 
substantial,  and  containing  several  rooms.  Though 
made  of  stone,  their  weapons  and  utensils  were  very 
finely  finished. 

Their  religious  system  was  highly  developed  and 
its  ritual  elaborate,  and  they  had  an  extensive  oral 
literature.  Their  mortuary  customs  were  singular, 
the  bodies  of  the  dead  in  some  tribes  being  exposed 
until  the  flesh  decayed,  when  the  bones  were  cleaned 
and  buried  in  the  gentile  mound. 

The  gentile  system  prevailed,  descent  being  in 
the  female  line.  Women  had  a  standing  equal  to 
that  of  men,  and  occasionally  one  filled  the  office 
of  chief. 

The  neighbours  of  the  Muskogi  stock  were  the 
Algonquins  and  Iroquois  on  the  north,  the  Timu- 
quans  of  Florida,  and  the  isolated  Dakota  colony  of 
the  Biloxi  on  the  south,  and  the  Natches,  Tonicas, 
and  southern  Dakotas  on  the  west. 

Some  of  the  tribes  of  the  Muskogi  stock  were  : 

ALIBAMU  =  "  burnt  clearing  "  (not  "  here  we  rest ")  (Gatschet). 

On  the  Alabama  River,  Alabama. 
APALACHI  =  "  people  on  the  other  side  "  (Gatschet).     Apalachi 

Bay,  Florida. 
CHAKTA   or  OHOCTA — from    a  Spanish  word,    meaning  "flat 

head"  (Gatschet).     Southern  Mississippi. 
CHIKASA  or  CHICKASAW  =  "  rebels  or  renegades."      Northern 

Mississippi. 
HITCHITI  =  "  looking    up    ahead  "    (Gatschet).      Southeastern 

Georgia. 
MASKOGI  or  CREEK  PROPER — doubtfully  from  the  Algonquin 

word  maskigo,  meaning  "  swampy."    Central  Alabama. 
SEMINOLE  =  "  wanderers  or  runaways."    Northern  and  Central 

Florida. 

YAMASI  =  "  gentle  "  (Gatschet).    Southern  coast  of  South  Caro 
lina 


THE  NORTH  AMERICANS.  267 

The  territory  occupied  by  this  stock  is  thus  seen 
to  be  not  very  large,  yet  owing  to  their  industrious 
habits  and  their  adaptability  to  civilized  pursuits,  they 
have  made  a  good  struggle  for  existence,  and  to-day 
are  doing  well  and  increasing  in  numbers.  The  Apa- 
lachi  and  Yamasi  are  extinct,  and  but  few  remain  of 
the  Alibamu  ;  but  there  are  10,000  Choctaws,  2,500 
Chickasaws,  9,500  Creeks,  and  2, GOO  Seminoles  in  the 
Indian  Territory,  a  few  Choctaws  in  Louisiana,  and 
about  400  Seminoles  in  Florida.  The  Indians  of  this 
stock  who  are  in  the  Indian  Territory  are  civilized  and 
well  to  do. 

Besides  the  stocks  already  spoken  of,  there  are 
others,  whose  importance  deserves  a  more  extended 
mention  than  can  here  be  given.  One  of  these  is  the 
Shoshoni,  a  family  occupying  the  Rocky  Mountains 
and  the  plains  on  the  flanks  of  that  range  from  Red 
Deer's  River — which  flows  into  the  Saskatchewan — 
or  perhaps  even  from  the  head  of  Peace  River,  south 
through  Mexico.  This  stock  includes  tribes  whose 
names  are  well  known,  and  its  culture  ranged  from 
the  lowest  to  the  highest,  from  the  miserable  Diggers 
and  Sheep-eaters  to  the  Aztecs,  who  had  some  acquaint 
ance  with  metal,  and  far  exceeded  any  other  North 
American  tribe  in  their  approach  to  civilization.  To 
this  stock  belong  the  brave  but  peaceful  Snakes,  the 
warlike  Comanches,  the  Pai-Utes,  the  Gosiutes,  the 
mountain-loving  Utes,  the  Mokis,  the  Guaymas,  the 
Mayas,  the  Papagos,  the  Pimas,  the  Yaquis,  the  Az 
tecs,  the  Tlascalans,  and  others  reaching  south  to 
Guatemala.  Dr.  Brinton  gives  forty-four  tribes  of 
this  stock,  divided  into  three  groups,  and  covering 
territory  from  British  to  Central  America. 


268  THE  STORY  OF  THE  INDIAN. 

Another  family  of  importance  is  the  Pawnee  or 
Caddo,  whose  territory  extended  interruptedly  from 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  upper  Missouri.  They 
were  immigrants  from  the  southwest,  probably  from 
the  shores  of  the  Gulf  of  California,  and  brought  with 
them  to  their  northern  home  some  religious  cere 
monies  and  beliefs  which  remind  us  of  the  Aztecs. 
The  usual  form  of  sacrifice  was  a  burnt  offering". 

o 

They  lived  in  permanent  villages,  tilled  the  soil,  and 
manufactured  pottery.  Some  of  their  traditions  al 
lude  to  a  time  when  a  woman  was  their  chief. 

It  is  hoped  that  from  the  foregoing  pages  some 
notion  may  be  had  of  the  past  and  present  condition 
of  some  of  the  best-known  tribes  of  the  North  Amer 
icans. 


INDEX. 


Agriculture,  48,  64. 
Algonquins,  247. 
Animal  beliefs.  174, 205. 
Antelope,  87. 
Arrow  making,  146. 
Athabascans,  253. 
Atius  Tirawa,  202. 
Axe,  152. 

Bear,  beliefs  about,  206. 

Beaver,  beliefs  about,  206. 

Berries,  65,  71. 

Berry  Child,  109. 

Big  Snake,  178. 

Boats,  160. 

Bone,  gambling  with,  2T. 

Bow,  150. 

Bridled  Man,  115. 

Buffalo  hunting,  71. 

Buffalo,  in  mythology,  192. 

Buffalo,  sacred  animal,  205. 

Buffalo  stone,  60. 

Buffalo  traps,  57. 

Buffalo,  52,  et  seq. 

Bundles,  sacred,  91,  105,  189,  211, 

218. 
Buzzard,  belief  about,  207. 

Caches,  49. 
Caddos,  268. 
Camas  root,  65,  72. 
Canoe,  157  et  seq. 
Cardinal  points,  210. 
Carving,  161. 
Children's  games,  17. 
Children,  17,  78. 


Christianity,  teachings  of,  221 
Clothing,  153. 
Coldmaker,  173. 
Corn,  Mother,  190,  208. 
Corn,  origin,  190,  203. 
Coup,  142. 
Creation,  183. 

Dakotas,  257. 

Dancing,  social,  24. 

Deer,  81. 

Dolls,  19. 

Dreams   and  dreaming,  10^  i(J6, 

175,  210,  217. 
Dress,  6,  37,  153. 
Dwellings,  144  et  seq. 

Eagle,  belief*  about,  207. 
Elk,  81,  87. 

Feasting,  9,  81. 

Ferret,  black-footed,  175. 

Firesticks,  239. 

Fishing,  49. 

Four  Bears,  97,  141. 

Future  life,  195  et  s«g. 

Gambling,  22,  24,  26,  lOOt  ita 
Game  as  food,  50. 
Gardens,  48. 
Ghosts,  196  et  seq. 
Giants,  184. 
Government,  245. 

Hands,  gambling  game,  27. 

Horse  racing,  29. 

Horses,  first  possession  of,  231. 


270 


INDEX. 


Horses  taken  by  war  parties,  88. 
Household  utensils,  154. 
Hunting  buffalo,  71. 
Hunting  mountain  sheep,  82. 

Implements,  143  et  seq. 
I-nis'kim,  60. 
Iroquois.  261. 

Left  Hand,  94. 
Lodges,  144  et  seq. 

Marriage,  8,  30  et  seq. 

Maul,  152. 

Medicine,  175. 

Medicine  man,  180. 

Medicine  sweat,  5. 

Missionaries,  221. 

Moccasins,  153. 

Moon,  204,  215. 

Mountain  sheep,  81. 

Mountain  sheep,  hunting  the,  82. 

Musical  instruments,  162. 

Muskogis,  265. 

Nahurac,  205. 

Painting  bodies,  4,  25. 

Pawnees,  268. 

Pawnee  creation  myths,  184. 

Pawnee  marriage,  41. 

Pawnee-Skidi  fight,  127. 

Pemmican,  49. 

Picture  writing,  243. 

Piegan  and  Crow  and  Gros  Ven- 

tres  fight,  134. 
Pipes  and  smoking,  31,  45,  161, 

202,  209. 
Pottery,  154. 
Prayers  and  praying,  52.  61,  68,  73, 

87,  91, 165, 175,  202,  210, 213,  215. 

Keincarnation,  199. 
Religious  ceremonies,  52,  61,  68, 
73,  87,  91,  203,  204. 


King  game,  5,  21. 
Roots  for  food,  64. 

Sacred  bundles,  91,  105, 189,  211, 

218. 

Sacrifices,  52,  68,  87,  124,  204, 
Salmon  fishing,  66. 
Shields,  153. 
Shoshoni,  267. 
Skidi  war  woman,  104. 
Sledges,  156. 

Smoking,  31,  45, 161,  202,  209. 
Spirits,  196. 
Stars,  204,  216. 
Stick  game,  5,  21. 
Stone  implements,  143. 
Subsistence,  48. 
Sun,  204,  215. 
Sweat  lodge,  3,  5. 

Three  Suns,  12,  30,  82. 
Thunder,  204. 
Thunder  bird,  169. 
Thunder  pipe,  170. 
Tipi,  145. 

Tirawa,  184,  202  et  seq. 
Traps  for  game,  57. 
Travois,  156. 

Under-water  people,  166. 
Utensils,  143  et  seq. 

War  parties,  88  et  seq. 

Weaving,  155. 

Wheel  game,  21. 

White  Bear,  177. 

White  men,  first  meeting,  224. 

Wife,  46. 

Windmaker,  173. 

Wolf  Calf,  232. 

Woman  changed  to  rock,  69. 

Woman's  position,  46,  244. 

Women,  daily  life  of,  6. 


THE  END. 


(16) 


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